


’Cause We Don’t Say What We Really Mean

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Styles - Fandom, Louis Tomlinson - Fandom, One Direction (Band)
Genre: (not between H&L), Angst, Canon Compliant, Cheating, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:16:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 35,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Harry and Louis's lives throughout the years, revisited in timestamps through the lens of Harry's point of view.1- August 2010 • 2- January 2011 • 3- March 2011 • 4- July 2011 • 5- December 2011 • 6- February 2012 • 7- May 2012 • 8- August 2012 • 9- December 2012 • 10- June 2013 • 11- September 2013 • 12- September 2013 (Louis's pov) 13- February 2014 • 14- September 2014 • 15- February 2015 • 16- June 2015 • 17- December 2015 • 18- January 2016 • 19- October 2016 • 20- December 2016 • 21- February 2017 • 22- September 2017





	1. August 2010

**August 2010**

“Should we play Never Have I Ever or summat?” Niall asked. He took a long swig of the horrible Pimm’s mixture Zayn had concocted and somehow managed not to wince at it.

“Nah,” Zayn said. “Reckon it’ll get boring quite fast.” He looked at Harry and raised his eyebrows. “I can smoke here, yeah?”

Harry nodded, because he wanted Zayn to think he was cool. He wanted all the boys to think he was cool, which was quite a task because Harry didn’t consider _himself_ cool. He’d probably get quite a bollocking from Robin and his mum later on. The stench of cigarettes would linger, and there was no way Robin wouldn’t notice half his alcohol cupboard missing. But it’d be worth it, Harry told himself. He never got into trouble anyway; they’d forgive him fast. If things went well, he’d be living in London by the time his parents went to check on the bungalow and noticed. A phone bollocking was nothing. There’d be no grounding if that were to happen.

“All right, then what do we do?“ Niall asked. “What drinking game shall we play?”

 _Spin the bottle_ , Harry thought to himself. He considered saying it out loud as a joke, just in case the boys found the idea ridiculous enough to go for it, but dismissed it fast. That little fear that tingled every single one of his nerve endings all the time amplified itself enough to become itchy. Harry scratched his forearms and squirmed in his seat. At the beginning, around the first time he felt it, he wondered if it’d ever go away. Then he learnt to live with it. Got used to it, even.

“No games.” Louis swat the back of Niall’s head. “We don’t need a game to drink and talk about shagging.” He laughed loudly and snatched the bottle of Schnapps Liam was holding, tilting it up and taking a long gulp of it.

If it were anyone else, Harry would find Louis’s laughter obnoxious and his mannerisms when drinking boastful, but Louis... Louis was pretty. He had pretty eyes, pretty hair, pretty legs and a nice arse. He was also eighteen and talked with an air of self-assurance that made Harry swoon. He felt like an idiot, trailing behind Louis at every turn, guffawing at every single one of his lame jokes. He kept catching himself staring at Louis without even noticing.

Harry wondered how long it’d take the others to realise the big fat crush he had. How they’d react to it when they did. Would they request the show’s producers to be replace him in the band? Would Louis be repulsed by it? The itching spread to Harry’s knees and thighs. For the millionth time in his sixteen years of life Harry internally cried at how much of a fucking curse being into blokes could be.

“So, what?” Liam asked. He snatched the bottle back and took a more moderate sip. “Do we just ask each other stuff? That sounds all sorts of gay.”

“ _You_ sound gay,” Louis said. “How is it gay to talk about shagging birds? Jesus, such a berk.” He laughed again and looked at Harry. “Right, Curly? Let’s start with the youngin. How many birds have you shagged?”

Harry wished he had enough alcohol tolerance to drink like the others without worrying about saying something stupid. “One?” he said. “My ex-girlfriend. Not very exciting, sorry.”

“One’s okay at sixteen,” Zayn said with a nod and a smile.

“As long as you mean _shagging_ by shagging,” Louis added. “Not gettin’ head and wanking, ’course. If you add those, how many?” He was still looking at Harry, and God that was nerve-racking.

“Um, not that many more, ’m afraid,” Harry said. At Louis’s encouraging hand gestures, he swallowed hard. “Like, three? No. Four.”

Four because it didn’t feel fair to keep Friedrich out of the list. Sure, he wasn’t exactly a bird, but it was Harry’s latest addition, just a couple of weeks ago. The first boy that’d ever touched his dick, and the best head he’d ever received. It’d taken them almost a week to get from awkward ‘are we flirting?’ in the midst of a thousand volleyball games (enough for Harry to learn how to count in German) to sloppy snogging in the middle of a random Turkish alley as far away as they could from their respective families. By the time Harry gathered the courage to offer Friedrich to get off together, his holiday was almost over and he only had a few hours before his flight back to Manchester.

“Don’t look so scared,” Louis said with a smile. “Nobody’s gonna judge you here, Hazza. Was mostly kidding. Four people’s a lot at sixteen, actually. Meself, I’ve only shagged two birds including my current girlfriend and got off with about five others, and I’m two years older. By the time you’re my age, you’ll probably be a master shagger.”

“Yeah,” Harry said with a forced chuckle. “I’ll go check if there’s anything else to drink. You guys keep talking.”

At that point, Harry considered one of Robin’s bollockings a much more welcome scenario than this entire conversation.


	2. January 2011

**January 2011**

A loud knock on the door abruptly woke Harry up. He was having a nightmare in which a giant spider with Savan Kotecha’s head was telling him he was sacked from One Direction, so it took him a second to come back to. Enough for whoever was at the door to knock again.

“Yeah?” he called. He felt Louis rub his nose between his shoulder blades and smiled the stupid dopey smile he’d grown to hate but couldn’t avoid.

“It’s me,” Niall’s voice said from outside. “Can’t sleep and Zayn’s snoring.”

“Well, we _were_ asleep, Neil,” Louis said. “Can’t you go annoy Liam?”

Harry felt him sit up behind his back and shift away.

“He’s on another floor, Lewis. I’d have to go on the lift. The hotel’s filled with fans, no way!” Niall knocked again. “C’mon! ’S only midnight. I’ve got a flask?”

Louis turned the light of the bedside table on and sighed. “Haz,” he whispered. “Go mess up the other bed, mate.”

Harry bit his lip and swallowed hard. There it was, the familiar feeling of tears behind his eyes.

“Yeah,” he said. He sat on the edge of the bed and shook his head to clear it. When he opened his eyes, he saw the discarded condom wrapper on the floor and bent over to pick it up.

“I’m dying of boredom,” Niall yelled from outside. “What the feck are you doing? Open up!”

Harry ignored him and put the wrapper on the pocket of a pair of jeans he found on the floor. He couldn’t risk throwing it in the bathroom bin. He made his way to the other bed and threw himself on it face first, then started moving his limbs in every direction to mess it up.

“Jesus, it reeks of come in here,” Louis whispered-shouted with a chuckle. “Curly, pants?”

“Aaaaaaaaaaah!” Niall screamed.

“Yours or mine?” Harry lifted his head and started scanning the floor. He found Louis’s underwear and threw it at him. “Yours, right.”

“He’s gonna expect you to be naked.” Louis winked at him as he opened the window with one hand and caught his pants with the other. “Get under the covers, mate.” He put his underwear on and then proceeded to spray some deodorant.

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry said as he complied. He touched his mouth and face to make sure there wasn’t anything left over from the _facial treatment_ Louis had given him earlier.

“What are you guys _doing_?” Niall screamed, just as Louis reached to open the door.

“Oh, nothing. You caught us in the middle of a midnight shag,” Louis said, then rolled his eyes. He shut the door behind Niall and made grabby hands at him “Give us the flask, then.”

“You just want me for my alcohol,” Niall said with a fake pout as he handed Louis the small bottle.

He sat on Louis’s bed and Harry faced the fastest internal battle of them all. Did he wish for Niall to sit on the wet spot and discover his and Louis’s affair or not? Immediate thought: yes. Then it’d stop being a bloody secret. Upon further inspection: no. Then maybe they’d stop doing it.

“Only when you wake me up, lad.” Louis sat next to Niall and patted his back. He took a sip of liquor and passed the flask back, then bent over behind Niall to reach for his mobile phone on the bedside table.

“H, want some?” Niall asked, throwing the flask at him before Harry could answer. “I seriously can’t believe the noises that come out of Zayn’s mouth, lads. You’d swear a bloke so small would never be able to snore like that.”

Harry opened the bottle and smelled inside. There was no way he was drinking that. “Was he on key at least?” he asked.

Both Niall and Louis cracked up at that, and Harry smiled to himself at his small victory.

“Sounded a bit like The Wanted,” Niall said. “Did Payno tell ya?”

Harry propped himself up on his elbow and glanced at Louis, who was engrossed on his phone. “Tell us what?”

“That bird he’s been seeing, Danielle? The dancer?” Niall got up and sat next to Harry, then picked up the flask and took a sip. “She’s coming on tour with us after all.”

“Oh. That’s good, right?” Harry asked.

Niall pinched his side and flashed him a smile. “That means we’re the only ones who are single. When are we gonna go on the pull, H?”

“Zayn and Rebecca aren’t official, though,” Harry said. Because he didn’t want to call himself single. And he didn’t want to go on the pull.

“Might as well be,” Louis said. He’d dropped his phone and was leaning back against the bed frame. “At least for tour. She’s gonna be everywhere.”

“Speaking of,” Niall said. “What’s Hannah doing? Did they give you permission for her to stay with us after all?”

No, Louis didn’t get permission for his girlfriend to stay with them at their hotels. Because he didn’t ask for it. Because Harry had begged him not to. He had swallowed his tears and sobs and, as soberly as he could, told Louis it’d be awkward for the band to have someone from outside sharing a room. Louis had pretended it was sound reasoning, as if Rebecca and now Danielle wouldn’t do exactly that, and agreed to it.

Things like that were the reasons why Harry was so conflicted. On one hand, he felt constantly anguished and perpetually jealous. He felt dirty every time he saw Hannah. He _hated_ lying to everyone. He felt stupid for agreeing to being _the other woman_ for so long. But on the other hand, Louis then made these grand gestures and looked at Harry with those beautiful blue eyes and shut him up with a kiss and Harry went back to square one. Wash, rinse, repeat. For three straight months. The sad love songs were writing themselves in Harry’s head.

“Nah,” Louis said. “Doesn’t matter, though. She’s got to sort out what she’s doing with uni anyway. Also, we’re going on holiday with my family next week, so she didn’t even throw a strop when I told her. Just said that as long as I’m there for our anniversary, it’ll be okay.”

“Will you?” Niall asked. He got up to hand Louis the flask but quickly sat back next to Harry. “When’s your anniversary?”

Harry faked a yawn and hid his head between the pillows. He hated, hated, hated this. There was lube still between his legs, Christ.

“Eighth of March,” Louis said. “Hazza? You okay?” His voice sounded affected with concern. Good. Well, not really.

Hated, hated, hated.

“’M tired,” Harry replied without lifting his head. He was this close to crying. Luckily, he actually had to yawn this time, and it kind of hid the cracking in his voice.

“I’ll let you go back to sleep, sorry,” Niall said. “Can I kip here? Don’t wanna go back.”

“Sure, Neil,” Louis said. He still sounded concerned. “Sleep with me, though. Unless you wanna share with the nudist.”

Harry was getting dizzy from lack of air, but he still didn’t lift his head. “Heey,” he protested weakly.

“I actually prefer the nudist,” Niall said. “You fart in your sleep, Tommo. No offence.”

Louis didn’t say anything, but he must’ve given Niall the finger because they both laughed. Harry heard Niall shedding his trousers and t-shirt and quickly getting into bed. He and Louis said their goodnights and Harry could tell Louis turned the bedside table light off because the ambience went even darker.

Just as Harry was drifting back to sleep, he felt Niall’s arm draped around his back and Niall’s breath across his ear as he whispered, “Buddy, you got me on your side always, you know? ’S okay…”


	3. March 2011

**March 2011**

Sweat stuck to Harry's neck and all over his back but he was so exhilarated he didn't care. Now that he'd finally got used to live performances, he enjoyed every second of it and couldn't get enough. After a gig, such as the one they'd just finished, Harry felt wired for the next couple of hours, barely being able to sit still for a second.

But a Manchester gig meant guests, at least for him and Louis, so he knew he had to find a way to calm himself down somehow. He had a quick shower in Aiden's dressing room and put on some fresh clothes. He shook his wet hair and tried to make it look presentable as he made his way to the lounge area, making a quick pit stop at the buffet table to grab a couple of snacks.

He spotted Alana's brown mane from a few feet away and rushed to get to her, hugging her from behind and resting his head on her shoulder. The last time they'd seen each other they'd been the same height, but now he had to bend over to reach her.

"Hiya!" she said as she turned around. "My god, you've become a giant!"

He laughed as he took a step back. "Hi, love." He kissed her cheek. "Where's Chloe? Did she come with?"

"No, she was busy." Alana grabbed his hand and pulled him towards one of the sofas so they could sit. "She said she'd come with Gemma and her mum soon, though, so you'll definitely see her. I came with my uni roommates, after all."

"Oh, that's cool," Harry said. He hadn't met any of Alana's roommates yet, but Niall kept pestering him to invite them because he'd seen some pictures on Facebook somehow. Perhaps now he'd meet them and shut up. "How many did you bring?" he asked. "I don't think I sent you that many tickets. You live with like, a thousand people."

"Ha-ha. I brought two, Tanya and Eleanor," Alana said. "And I only live with nine other people. It's not that many. You'd know if you went to uni, but of course now that you're all famous you won't have to, huh?"

People kept telling Harry that, that he was famous now. That he wouldn't have to continue his studies, that he was gonna be rich. Harry wasn't sure of any of it. All they'd done so far was come third in a singing competition. They did have a recording contract, but then again, so did a lot of former X Factor contestants, and only a handful of them had something to show for it.

He had gone and quit school, though, and he was more or less living in London, so his life was definitely different.

Before they went on tour, he and the lads were put upon in a hotel by their label, who had also promised to rent them all a more permanent place to live soon. They all kept a healthy dose of scepticism, and they discussed what they'd do if their dream fell flat in their faces. If their music came out and nothing happened, if for whatever reason the label decided to backtrack and drop them.

Niall had decided that he'd go back to Ireland and busk until he made it. With his new X Factor fame and how small Ireland was, he had a real chance of making a living out of it, even if he didn't become actually famous. Liam had said that he'd go back to X Factor for round three, while Zayn had simply stated that he'd go back home with his parents, back to school, to uni and a normal life with no regrets, knowing he'd given it a whirl.

Upon hearing all that, Harry and Louis had agreed that they'd move to London together, work in whatever to support themselves and try to make it in music in some kind of way. It gave Harry an odd sense of reassurance to know that he'd have Louis regardless of what happened with the band. It calmed the possessive monster inside of him, the one that felt wounded every time Louis mentioned his girlfriend.

Their  _relationship_ wasn't one as such. Harry had harboured a crush on Louis basically since they'd met back in July and they'd been tactile and affectionate ever since, but it wasn't until November that anything had happened. They'd had an excruciatingly stressful week where everything seemed to go wrong, and they'd all panicked about being sent home. In the end, they weren't even close to being eliminated, but the relief they'd all felt was so big that they'd agreed on stealing all sorts of alcohol from the traditional after party with their friends and family in order to celebrate alone later at the contestants house. Somehow they'd managed enough for the five of them to get plastered. Enough for Liam, who had a low alcohol tolerance due to some kidney issues, to start chucking up a storm, bent over the house's main toilet.

Niall, who had more experience with helping friends nursing alcohol-induced sickness, had offered to help sort him out, while Zayn had simply gone to their room to sleep it off, leaving Harry and Louis absolutely pissed and to their own devices. If asked, Harry would have a hard time explaining how they'd gone from laughing at their own shadows to snogging against the kitchen door and locking themselves in the second toilet to get each other off, but it'd happened nonetheless.

There'd been no words about it afterwards, no awkward discussion, no apologies needed. It'd simply happened again not a week later, this time, without the aid of alcohol. It'd kept happening after that, often enough that Harry felt comfortable bringing it up in casual conversation with Louis. They still hadn't discussed what it meant, perhaps because they were two awkward teenagers, perhaps because they weren't emotionally mature to handle disentangling the mess they'd created. Louis still had a girlfriend; Harry was still his best mate, and, presumably, nobody but the two of them knew just how often they made each other orgasm.

It'd gone on that way for months, with both of them making a conscious effort to keep it from the other three until February, when Liam caught them with Louis's trousers at his ankles and Harry knelt before him, about to take his dick in his mouth. He'd called a band meeting, Liam had, and he'd broken the news of what he'd found out to their two very unsurprised band mates. It'd turned out that Zayn had heard them get off when they thought they were being inconspicuous back in the X Factor house, and Niall was simply very intuitive.

When Liam had asked them what it all meant, Louis had taken the lead answering, saying it was simply normal for two young lads to help each other out. That he was away from his girlfriend so much he needed the release, that a warm mouth was a warm mouth after a while, whether a bloke's or a girl's. Through it all, Harry hadn't said anything. He hadn't even pointed out how much they both clearly enjoyed being on the giving end of blowjobs as well, how the frequency of what they did contradicted the "helping each other out" excuse. How much they kissed and caressed each other even when it wasn't sexual. How reality was completely disconnected from what Louis was saying.

He hadn't said anything because he was sixteen and stupid and smitten and the thought of having to be close to Louis but not being able to touch him felt excruciating, and he was sure Louis would put an end to it altogether if the truth were to come out. He kept on not saying anything because he stupidly harboured hope that Louis would eventually see the light, chuck his girlfriend and admit his true feelings.

It wasn't something Harry was willing to admit to himself, but the scenario played constantly in the back of his mind, and it was a big part of the reason Harry had fallen so utterly and desperately in love.


	4. July 2011

**July 2011**

Harry locked his phone and resisted the urge to throw it against a wall. It would've been incredibly dramatic of him to react so strongly, and he'd been working on controlling his teenage angst for a while.

What he couldn't resist, though, were the tears that spilled down his cheeks, or, rather, he didn't try to. He let them run freely, let his nose stuff up and his eyes get red and his whole face become blotchy. He didn't even wipe the tears away, just grabbed a pillow and held it tight in his lap as he sobbed silently for a few minutes.

His life was happy most of the time. He had a good and supportive family, amazing friends, was fulfilling dreams he'd never even allowed himself. He had financial stability and the promise of future wealthiness and famous friends and even  _fans_. His life was mad good, but sometimes, when the world was quiet and left him alone with his thoughts, Harry felt and underlying anguish that he couldn't get rid of.

It was the result of wanting this one thing so bad it hurt like a stab wound, but knowing how slim the chances of getting it were. It was the result of being able to constantly graze that thing with the tips of his fingers but never being able to fully grasp it.

That  _thing_ was Louis, and Harry could have him in every single way available except the one he yearned. He could have Louis as his thoughtful and supportive band mate, as his funny and loyal friend, as his trustworthy confidant, as his passionate casual lover. He could have all those versions of Louis at once or in any combination he wanted. What he couldn't have was Louis as his devoted boyfriend, and every time Harry was reminded of it, he felt a little pinch on the side of his chest.

He got glimpses of it when his tactile, cuddly friend Louis met his horny, intense lover Louis, but that was about it. The romantic boy that sent flowers to his partner and sang them to sleep on the phone and whispered them sweet nothings was reserved for a lovely blonde girl called Hannah that couldn't seem to go away

Well, that was until right about then, apparently. Because according to Hannah's Twitter account, she and Louis were officially not together any more. And therein lied the issue with Harry, because Louis hadn't even thought of telling him about it.

He didn't tell him as a supportive band mate, as a funny loyal friend, as a trustworthy confidant or as a passionate casual lover. Harry had to find out that the person he was about to move in with and that he loved with all his heart had ended a year-and-a-half long relationship through Twitter of all places. And it just about ripped Harry's heart to pieces because what did it mean, then? Was he anything to Louis at all?

His sobs subsided right around the time there was a knock on the door. It was his turn to get the single room and for once he hadn't switched with whoever Louis was rooming with, which was probably for the best.

He pushed the cuffs of his zip-up hoodie under his eyes to wipe the tears away and opened the door. He wasn't the littlest bit surprised to find Louis on the other side of it.

"Hey, mate," Louis said. "Savan asked me to give you this." He handed Harry a squeezy pack of honey from Waitrose. "Said your voice sounded a bit nasal?"

"Yeah, thanks," Harry said. He closed the door behind Louis and dropped the honey at the foot of the bed. He sat next to it, then, and kept his eyes downcast, self-conscious of how obvious the evidence of his crying must've been.

Louis sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him. Without lifting his gaze, Harry could see his trainers and part of his trackies.

"Are you gonna tell me what's up?" Louis asked. "What's wrong?"

Harry scruffed his toes against the carpeted floor. "Why didn't you tell me you broke up with Hannah?" He made eye contact with Louis, then. "Had to find out from her Twitter."

"Oh, um..." Louis scratched behind his left ear nervously. "I guess, well... I kinda didn't want you to get the wrong idea, y'know? Like, I didn't know how to say it without sounding like..."

Harry looked at Louis expectantly, waiting for him to finish the sentence. When he didn't, Harry prompted, "Like...?"

Louis huffed and rolled his eyes. "Sorry, 's just awkward, innit?" he said. "I didn't want you to believe I was like, fishing for more... like, with you."

"Oh."

"Yeah, like, things don't have to change," Louis said. "I like them the way they are, but I guess I was just, like, worried I'd hit the wrong tone, make you believe I expected or wanted more."

"You didn't want me to believe you were leaving her for me..." Harry said. And he felt cold in his chest and a sharp pain on his side. It felt a little as if all his organs were shattering into a million pieces.

"Yeah."

"I wouldn't have," Harry lied. "I know my place."

Louis huffed a laugh. "Don't make it sound sordid, mate. You're my best friend.  _Your place_ is everywhere in my life. I just didn't really have a solid reason for breaking up with Hannah and knew you'd ask, so I got kinda worried it'd sound... weird. Y'know?"

"You could've just said that." Harry rolled his lower lip inside his mouth, chewed on it, sighed. "I think we made one big mistake with the whole getting off together thing, and that's not making it clear our friendship and the band come first. We talk about everything, even our biggest fears and our saddest stories, so we should also be able to say these things without having to pull teeth."

"Sex makes things awkward," Louis said. He leaned back on his hands and stretched his legs. "I guess, since we're talking about putting our friendship first, there's something more I need to tell you."

Harry nodded for Louis to continue. The sudden rush of anxiety that sentence had caused didn't allow him to talk.

"So, um, I've kinda been talking to someone for a while and, I dunno... might start seeing her sometimes, now that I'm single," Louis said. "Just thought, y'know, I should've told you about her when we started talking. Stan's known since back in March. I guess it felt weird to bring her up with you, but you're right. Friendship first, so now you know."

March... Louis had been talking to some other girl, other than his girlfriend, since  _March_.

"Who is it?" Harry managed to ask. "Do I know her?" And frankly, he was surprised at how well he was holding in together. Everything inside him felt wrong. His guts had twisted themselves into knots.

"Yeah, that girl that's roommates with your friend. Her name's Eleanor," Louis said with a small smile. "Dunno if you've met her actually, but she's well fit."

"Is that why you've left Hannah, then?"

"Not really," Louis said. "Things with Hannah weren't working out. Reckon I would've broken up eventually anyway. But... I guess I did kinda decide to fuck it and end it so I could be with Eleanor whenever I wanted, y'know?"

"And what was stopping you when you were with Hannah?" Harry asked. He was growing more and more confused by Louis's reasoning, which wasn't a nice addition for a broken heart.

"Didn't wanna cheat?" Louis said, as if it were the most logical conclusion in the world.

Harry frowned and shook his head. "Um?" He gestured to himself vaguely.

"Well, that's hardly the same!" Louis said with a chuckle. "I mean  _cheat_ -cheat. There's an emotional connection with El. It'd be like having two relationships at the same time. I don't two-time people, mate."

"Right," Harry said. And at this point, the fact that he was still talking was an achievement.

The fact that he was still together in one piece and not a pile of rotten mush on the floor was a fucking miracle.


	5. December 2011

**December 2011**

“Harold,” Nick said, making Harry look away from the telly and try to make out his face in the dark. “Are you still keen on girls?”

Caroline snorted from her spot and Harry glanced at her with a frown, then back at Nick. “What?”

“If you’re still keen on girls,” Nick repeated.

“I heard you, Grim,” Harry said. “Just… where’s this coming from? Why are you asking me that in the middle of Love Actually?”

Nick paused the film and turned on the lamp next to the sofa. He had a very thoughtful look on his face. “Martin Freeman’s bum, if I’m honest.”

Caroline snorted again. Harry was so confused. Did people start making less sense as they approached thirty?

“No, okay, look,” Nick said, “was just wondering ’cos I was like ‘if I make a comment about Martin Freeman’s bum looking good, everyone present in this room will be able to appreciate it’, right? And then I thought, ‘but that’s weird ’cos the other two people in the room are supposedly shagging each other, at least according to every tabloid in England, and they’re not even sharing pop corn.’ So I then wondered why, y’know? ’Cos you’re both fit and then it kinda hit me that you may not be keen on girls any more. So I asked.”

“You lost me there,” Caroline said. “Your train of thought had literally no correlation, Grimmy. Also, he’s seventeen. We’re not shagging for the same reason you’re not shagging: ’cos he’s seventeen.”

Nick stared at Harry with a frown, then back at Caroline. “That’s not the reason we’re not shagging. We’re not shagging ’cos Harry’s like my little brother.”

“It _should_ be the reason you’re not shagging, then,” Caroline said. “Also, you snogged like, last week.”

It was Harry’s turn to snort.

“Doesn’t mean anything,” Nick said. “I snog everyone.”

“Even your _brother_?” Harry asked. “Jesus, Grim.”

“Oh, bloody hell.” Nick rolled his eyes. “You both know what I mean. Stop splitting hairs.”

Caroline and Harry exchanged a look and laughed.

“No, but like,” Nick continued, “since when are you this against shagging seventeen-year-olds? Last I’d heard you were fiercely defending your right to shag him as many times as you wanted.”

Caroline shrugged one shoulder. “What am I supposed to say? That it’s wrong? And then he’ll be seen leaving my house in the morning and I’ll look even worse. Also, I do somewhat mean it. It’s nobody’s business anyway. He has parents. If we were sleeping together, it’d be up to them to object, not to random strangers that don’t know anything about us.”

“Methinks you’re just marking the limits of your morals as you go just so you can continue to get free press, Cazza,” Nick said.

She punched his shoulder. “Dick. ’S hardly free press anyway. Cougar of the year, I am.”

Nick laughed and stuck his tongue out at her. “Anyway,” he said. He looked at Harry. “Harold, are you still keen on girls or not?”

“I’m still keen on girls,” Harry said.

“When was the last time you pulled one, then?” Nick asked.

“I’m not having this conversation,” Harry said. He tried to grab the remote from Nick’s grasp but was unsuccessful, so he crossed his arms. “Just put the movie back on, Grim.”

“If you don’t wanna pull girls, I know of plenty of boys you can chat up,” Nick said. “Literally, don’t care. Anything for you to snap out of it. You have a number one single that’s smashing, an album that’s smashing, the coolest personality, you’re very, very pretty… I just don’t understand what you’re doing watching a film with us when you could be out there getting your oats.”

Harry sighed. He looked at Nick. “I’m here ’cos my label saw the attention mine and Cazza’s interactions brought and decided it’d be a cool idea to exploit them as romantic for headlines. And I don’t mind ’cos Cazza’s great, and you’re great, and I love Love Actually,” he said. “And I get my oats plenty. Way more than you, I’d wager.”

“Yeah, always with the same wanker who breaks your heart 24/7, nicely done, Popstar,” Nick said. “And that’s the thing, your label could be exploiting a real relationship if you had one. They could be getting headlines from you for sleeping with a beautiful model or summat, but they’re stuck with your thirty-one-year-old somewhat friend ’cos you don’t have anyone. No offence, Cazza.”

“Offence taken,” Caroline said, giving Nick the finger.

Harry buried his face in his hands. “Ughh.” He took a deep breath and lifted his head. “I don’t wanna sleep with anyone else. Just let it be. Why d’you care?”

“Well, because you’re my friend and I bloody love you to bits, Harry,” Nick said. “And I don’t fancy seeing people I love to bits suffer. I don’t fancy watching a film with you while knowing that you’re not paying attention ’cos it’s killing you to know Eleanor’s at your flat right now sleeping next to the boy you want to claim. How is it that hard to understand? The only way you’re gonna get over him is if you start focusing on the good things in your life and stop focusing on him. And I happen to think your incredible potential to pull boys, girls and everyone in between is a terribly good thing that you’re wasting simply because you’re fixated on the one dick that won’t give you what you want.”

“I’m not ‘fixated’, Grim,” Harry said. “I’m in love. And I can’t change it. Trust me I’ve tried. Now put the movie back on.” He looked at Nick tiredly and bit his lip. “Please.”

Nick sighed, pursed his lips and nodded. He exchanged a sad look with Caroline Harry pretended not to notice, turned the lamp off and unpaused the film without saying another word.


	6. February 2012

**February 2012**

Harry exited Oxford Circus in almost as much of a rush as he’d entered King’s Cross. He walked the streets that separated him from Broadcasting House so fast he smacked shoulders against at least five different people. He entered the building and basically ran towards Nick’s studio. Being there so often had its perks; the staff barely batted an eye at his presence now.

He’d texted Nick as soon as he’d lost Louis at St Pancras but hadn’t received a reply, which wasn’t that weird, considering Nick was on air and probably hadn’t had a proper break in the twenty minutes it’d taken Harry to make his way there.

Once he could finally see Nick through the studio window, Harry heaved a relieved sigh. He needed comfort and he needed it now, and Nick had proven himself the best at it in the past few months.

Nick peered up at him and pulled a face. Daniel Sloss was sat across from him and was saying something undoubtedly funny Harry couldn’t be arsed about right now. He attempted a grin in return, but it was probably the worst attempt ever as Nick’s smile fell and he pursed his lips.

“That bad?” he mouthed, and Harry could only manage a shrug. Nick looked at the clock on the wall, then back at Harry. He put up three fingers, mouthed, “Only three minutes. Be right with ya,” and made a pleading gesture. Harry nodded and sat on one of the empty producer’s chairs.

His phone vibrated, then. He took a glance at its lockscreen and promptly turned it off. The gall Louis had was certainly admirable. In a very fucked up way. Harry rested his folded forearms on the table in front of him and then his forehead on top of them as he tried to even his breathing. He didn’t quite fall asleep, but he managed to relax himself enough to not scream bloody murder, which was certainly an accomplishment.

A few moments later, he felt Nick’s hand on his shoulder and slowly lifted his head, lest gravity did something horrible and forced the tears in his eyes to actually fall.

“What’d he do now?” Nick asked. He crouched next to Harry and put both hands on his right thigh.

“Can’t get into it here,” Harry said. “Gonna cry.”

Nick huffed and bit his lower lip. “Can I kill him _now_ , then? Pretty please?”

“Grim…”

“I’ve an hour left here still,” Nick said. “You gonna stick around, Popstar? ’Ve already read your Valentine’s texts bit. Ta for that, by the by.”

“Welcome. Was inspired.” Harry rolled his eyes to himself. “Can I go to yours and wait there? Kinda wanna have a shower.”

“Was yours taken over by zombies, then?”

“You could say that,” Harry mumbled. “Yours ’s much closer anyway.”

“Handy excuse, that one,” Nick said. “Go to mine, have a shower. You smell all train-y and French-y. Could do with some soap and shampoo. Raid my wardrobe, while you’re at it. Show the world how much better you pull off my clothes.”

“I can’t tell what parts of that were supposed to be sarcastic, but thanks,” Harry said as he got to his feet.

“Things must be _really_ bad if you’ve stopped being able to decode me, then.” Nick straightened up and ambled towards the door. “Don’t be an idiot and take a taxi, yeah? It’s Valentine’s Day. The last thing you need is being mobbed crossing Regent’s Park.”

“It’s 11 PM, Grim,” Harry said. “I’ll take a taxi, though. Don’t worry. Go back to your show.”

As Harry left the studio he could hear Nick calling, “Don’t drown in my shower, Popstar!”

An hour and a half later, a showered, dressed and bored Harry heard the front door of Nick’s flat open and close. He clicked off the telly and cracked his neck. His stomach chose that exact moment to rumble.

“Aw, that was the nicest welcoming ever,” Nick said as he took his shoes off. “Left as fast as I could but the cabbie was a tosser, soz.” He made his way through the living room and towards his bedroom and called above his shoulder, “Come talk to me while I put my frock on.”

Harry followed Nick and sat on his unmade bed. He cracked his neck again.

“So…” Nick said as he switched trousers. “Out with it. What’d he do this time?”

Harry leaned back on the bed and crossed his legs at the ankle. He sighed. “Flirted with me all day, even in front of fans and in the middle of interviews. Snogged me in the middle of the Eurostar. Then, when we were getting off in St Pancras, asked me if I had somewhere to go tonight ’cos Eleanor was coming by the flat and making home cooked something. Can’t be arsed to remember what now. Hopefully it was cyanide.” He said it all in one breath in an attempt to tamp down the tears. It didn’t work.

“Murderous Harry might be my favourite Harry, and that’s saying something.” Nick smiled sadly at him and sat next to him on the bed. He was shirtless but still felt warm when he put an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “Listen,” he said, “we can’t keep doing this, y’know? Letting Tommo ruin your evenings over and over’s gotta be one of the worst plans I’ve ever heard of.”

Harry rested his head on Nick’s shoulder and wiped the tears away. He hummed in agreement but didn’t say anything else.

“Alexa and I are gonna go to Groucho and get proper sloshed to celebrate how single and pathetic we are. You’re coming with, okay?”

Harry nodded, head still nestled in the crook of Nick’s neck. More tears started spilling out and he swallowed a sob.

“Soz, I said the S word, right?” Nick asked. “I keep forgetting how much you hate it.”

“I shouldn’t be single,” Harry simply said.

“You’re a freshly eighteen popstar. Yes, you should,” Nick turned to face Harry and grabbed both of his sides. “What you shouldn’t be is moping over a prick that’s been stringing you along for over a year.” He huffed a breath and shook his head. “All right, tell you what. Go grab a pack of crisps from the kitchen. Eat all of them. We don’t want you vomming by 2 AM. I’ll cover my nipples and we’ll go out and get shitfaced. Okay?”

Harry wiped his tears with the cuff of his (Nick’s) jumper and nodded. “Okay.”

“No, you’re not gonna cry. I’m gonna tickle you all night if necessary, but you’re gonna laugh so hard your dimples will break, all right?” Nick pinched Harry’s side for emphasis. “You’re gonna enjoy this night and you’re gonna forget about that pillock at least for a few hours. If tomorrow you’re still sad, I promise I’ll listen to you moping all sodding day, put on the most depressing music I can think of and let you go through your misery for as long as you need. I just need you to let yourself be happy in spite of him, at least once.”

Harry let out a deep breath. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Link 1](https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01bsn34)   
>  [Link 2](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2101595/Nick-Grimshaw-parties-Harry-Styles-comforting-Caroline-Flack-split.html)
> 
>  
> 
> Coming next, probably:  
> -May 2012  
> -August 2012  
> -December 2012


	7. May 2012

**May 2012**

Harry propped himself up on his elbows and looked down at Louis, trying to make out his face in the near pitch black darkness of their shared hotel room. He brushed Louis’s long, sweaty fringe off his face and leaned down to kiss his lips, then his chin, then trailed small kisses down his jaw as Louis linked his arms behind Harry’s back and laughed.

“You smell so bad.” Harry chuckled. “Like, so, _so_ bad.”

“Oi.” Louis swatted Harry’s side, still laughing. “This disrespect for your elders’s got to stop, Styles.” He peered up at Harry and kissed his neck. “Wasn’t gonna have a shower if we’re gonna fuck. What’s the point? I’ll just get sweaty again.”

Harry wrinkled his nose, but couldn’t hold the grin in. “You’re disgusting. How can you not shower after a show? Don’t you feel all sticky? And I’m supposed to put my soapy-clean dick in that smelly bum, now? Nuh-uh.”

“Yes… get to it.” Louis gently slapped Harry’s arse.

Just as Harry was leaning down to kiss Louis’s lips again, the sharp sound of an iPhone’s default ring tone filled the room. When he glanced at the glow coming from the bedside table and saw Eleanor’s face and name lighting up Louis’s lockscreen, Harry’s heart fell.

He huffed and got to his feet. His knees were wobbly and he wanted to cry. Out of the corner of an eye, he saw Louis picking up the call. He rubbed a hand down his face. His first ridiculous thought was _why_. Why the fuck was she calling at — he glanced at his watch, straining his eyes to see its hands, and did quick time zone maths — 7 AM on a Tuesday. No, Wednesday. Why was she calling at 7 AM on a Wednesday? What could it possibly be that it couldn’t wait a few hours? Wasn’t she flying over and joining them in days anyway?

He felt immediately bad for his bitchiness. How on earth was Eleanor in the wrong for unknowingly interrupting her boyfriend’s illicit homosexual shag? Harry couldn’t allow himself to become the sort of monster that blames the girlfriend.

He grabbed his pants from the floor, put them on and trudged towards the bathroom, ignoring the worried look Louis was throwing him. He’d turned the bedside table light on and was leaning against the bed frame, speaking in the softest tone Harry’d ever heard coming out of his mouth.

Harry cursed internally, closed the bathroom door and sat on the floor against it. He buried his face in his hands and did his best not to listen in, but it was impossible. With the absolute silence that reigned and how close the bathroom was to the bed, Louis’s voice carried crystal clear.

“Yeah.” Louis laughed. “I know what you mean, yeah.” Pause. Eleanor’s turn to speak. She must’ve been telling him a funny anecdote because Louis let out a loud guffaw. “Obviously…” he said. “Always on your side, babe. Where do you want me to hide the body, then?” He laughed again. Longer pause. “Me? Nothing, love. Was watching The Matrix when you rang.” Pause. Another cackle. “I’ll watch it a thousand times if I want to. Stop pestering me!” Giggles. Pause. “Okay, send her my love. Have a perfect day, darling,” he said, tone even sweeter. A short pause. “I miss you too. Loads. Counting down the hours ’till Friday.” Pause. “Bye, El. Love you more.”

Harry choked on a sob. He couldn’t cry. He couldn’t cry. He got to his feet and ambled towards the sink to check himself in the mirror. Nothing about his appearance gave away his current condition, that there was a huge gaping hole in his heart.

He washed his face with warm water, fixed his hair a bit and walked out. Louis looked up from his phone, then, and gave him a small uncertain smile.

Harry didn’t — couldn’t — reciprocate. He started scanning the floor for his clothes. He put his trousers on without looking at Louis, grabbed his t-shirt and picked up his phone.

He was in the process of texting Zayn when Louis said, “What are you doing?”

Harry looked at him. Blinked twice. Looked back at his phone.

“Are you leaving?” Louis asked. He was frowning. “You don’t have to leave, Haz.”

“You’ll find, actually, that I do.” Harry put the t-shirt on. “Has Zayn got the single room? He’s not replying…” He started dialling Zayn’s phone number to ring him.

“He pulled,” Louis said. “Pretty sure I saw him leave the venue with a bird.” He swallowed. “You don’t have to leave. We won’t do anything, but you can stay. ’S your room too, Harry.”

Harry shook his head. Such a small move Louis probably missed it. He dialled Niall’s number instead. Raised the phone to his ear.

“Haz,” Louis said. “C’mon, mate.”

“’Lo?” Niall said on the phone. “H? Something wrong?”

“Hey, sorry to wake you,” Harry said as he bent over to put on his shoes. “Can I come kip with you and Liam tonight? Just tonight. I’ll ask Paul to get me a room in New York.”

Louis huffed, got below the covers and turned off the bedside table lamp.

“’Course.” Niall yawned. “Of course, H. You know I… Of course.”

“Thank you, Niall,” Harry said. “See you in a sec.”

They rang off, then, and as Harry blindly searched around his open suitcase for his hoodie, Louis turned the light back on.

“Why are you being this childish?” he asked. “You can stay here without fucking me, you overgrown toddler.”

Harry grabbed his hoodie, but as he silently made his way to the door, Louis leapt from the bed and got in his way.

“Talk, Jesus Christ!” he shouted. “Say fucking something!”

Harry inhaled deeply. “What is it that I have to say for you to leave me alone?”

Louis crossed his arms. He looked ridiculous in his tiny, tiny pants and gigantic case of bedhead paired up with the huge scowl on his face. “Why are you leaving?” he asked. “So what? I talked to my girlfriend, and? Were you not aware of her existence before she rang? It was two minutes for fuck’s sake. You don’t get to pull this ridiculous bullshit for a two-minute phone call with the girlfriend you’ve known I have since the beginning!”

“What ridiculous bullshit? I’m just leaving…”

“Yeah, you’re gonna cause a huge problem within the band and make me look like a bellend in front of Niall and Liam, who’ll definitely go with it to Zayn, when I didn’t do fucking shit! Who knows what you’ll tell ’em…”

Harry hadn’t planned on telling anyone anything. Just like he’d done for the past year and a half, with Nick and Jonny being the only exceptions. He didn’t reply to Louis’s accusations. He simply rolled his eyes and tried to walk around him.

“Uh, no. You’re not going anywhere.” Louis grabbed Harry’s arm and pulled him aside. “If you don’t fucking speak…”

Harry recoiled and yanked his arm away. “What? Are you gonna hit me?”

“Don’t be absurd.” Louis scrubbed his face with both hands. “I never take her calls in front of you if I can avoid it and you know it. I had to pick up tonight, Haz. It’s 2 AM what excuse could I have possibly given her if I hadn’t?”

Harry looked at the ceiling, rolled his lips inside his mouth and chewed on them, dropped his gaze back on Louis. Didn’t say a word.

“Why are you suddenly _this_ pissed?” Louis asked.

“’M not. Just can’t stand hearing you lie to her,” Harry said. Lied himself. Of course the cheating and the lying was a problem, but his broken heart tended to be at the forefront of his issues when it came to Louis.

“It’s none of your business,” Louis said. “But Eleanor’s not expecting me to be celibate while I’m on tour. She gets it.”

“You’ve told her?” Harry asked incredulously.

“We have the decorum not to talk about that shit, but she knows.”

 _That shit_. Harry swallowed hard. His pride, his tears, his miserableness, every ounce of hope he had left. It burned down his throat and settled heavy on his stomach.

“Bullshit,” he said. “Bullshit, you’ve not told her you cheat on her. You’ve not told her you cheat on her with a man. You’ve not told her you cheat on her with _me_.” _‘How does she not realise?’_ he didn’t add, though he really really wanted to.

“You know nowt about my relationship, Harry.” Louis pointed his index finger at him. “Stop fucking judging me from your nonexistent high horse.”

Harry sidestepped Louis and opened the door without a word, slamming it on his way out. He hurried through the hotel’s corridor until he found Niall and Liam’s door. He knocked softly and seconds later, a very sleepy looking Niall opened it.

“Hey, mate,” Niall said as he moved to the side to let Harry in. The door that led to the bathroom was open and the light there was on, casting shadows all around the room.

“Hey.” Harry walked inside and took his shoes off next to the door. He turned around to look at Niall. “Thanks for letting me kip here. Would’ve gone to Zayn’s but…”

“Nah, don’t mention it.” Niall sat on his bed and gave Harry a sad smile. “Everything okay?”

Before Harry could reply, he heard Liam groan from behind him.

“Can ya turn the light off?” he said with one eye open. Then he opened the other one. “H? What are you doing here?”

“He’s kipping here, Payno. Go back to sleep,” Niall said.

“What happened?” Liam sat up on his bed and rubbed his eyes. “Did you and Tommo have a fight?” he asked Harry.

Harry pursed his lips and nodded. “D’you mind that I’m here?”

Liam looked at him with a confused frown. “What’s that question? Shut up.” He patted the space beside him on the bed. “Share with me. Niall kicks way too much.”

“’S the dreams.” Niall shrugged. “You’ll be okay, right?” he asked. “You and Tommo, like, will there be any tension or summat?”

And Niall’s question made sense, because he and Louis never fought. So far, every time something similar to tonight had happened, Harry had mostly suffered in silence, so this was completely new territory for all of them.

He got in bed next to Liam facing the ceiling. Liam immediately started touching his hair.

“’M sure they’ll be fine,” Liam said. “Back to teaming up and annoying the fuck out of everyone in no time, eh?”

Harry couldn’t be so sure. There had to be a breaking point for his suffering and heartbreak. There had to be a point where it’d affect their friendship. Though they didn’t act coupley in public, Harry knew their intimate physical closeness had to be obvious to those that spent a lot of time with them, especially considering it was obvious to the fans that paid attention (as completely backwards as their conclusions about it were). It was even obvious to Harry’s mum and sister, who had separately confronted him about it a few months back (and subsequently, stopped finding ‘Larry Stylinson’ funny). Harry suspected the same could be said about Jay, Louis’s mum, because she’d started using social media to praise Eleanor in a way that was, perhaps, going a little too far as if compensating for something (or perhaps it was still normal, but Harry was simply hurt).

But the point was, those private moments they allowed themselves here and there were seeping through everything. And though Harry had been fighting with all his might to not allow his romantic feelings affect his friendship, he feared more and more that it was a losing battle. And he was terrified of what the consequences of it could be.

So, he didn’t reply anything, and he just hummed noncommittally when Niall laughed and said, “Back to taking the ‘dream team’ nickname way too far, huh?”

“Did the fight have to do with…” Liam trailed off.

Niall threw a pillow at him, but it hit Harry instead. “Don’t ask that! Sorry, H.”

Harry rubbed his nose where the pillow had hit him. “Ow? And it’s fine. You can ask,” he said. “Yeah, it had to do with that, but I’d rather not go into detail.”

“I was thinking —”

“Dangerous coming from you, Payno.” Niall laughed.

“Such an original joke,” Liam said in a chuckle. “ _I was thinking_ , that maybe you should like, try to _get some_ elsewhere too, y’know? Like Tommo does. That way it’d be even.”

“Because it worked _so well_ last time I tried,” Harry said, which was immediately followed by Niall and Liam cracking up.

“You have to try on your own!” Niall said, still laughing. “Only you’d think of asking _Zayn_ for help. He gets caught five out of ten times he gets laid.”

“Did he have to be recorded, though?” Harry said, drawing more giggles out of Niall and Liam. “On top of that, it was the worst blowjob I’ve ever received. Not worth the hassle, sorry.”

“We could set you up if you want,” Niall said. “A blind date or summat.”

“Yeah, I dunno,” Harry said. He faked a yawn. “Can we talk about it in the morning?”

“Sure, mate. G’night.” Liam patted his shoulder a few times and turned to face the other way.

Harry glanced at Niall, who got up to turn off the bathroom light. When he sat back in bed, though it was hard to make out more than shapes, Harry could see the sad expression on his face.

“It’ll be okay, H,” he said. He stretched his hand to pinch his cheek and got under the covers.


	8. August 2012

**August 2012**

Harry heard movement around the flat and sprang out of bed. He sprinted towards Louis’s bedroom and peeked inside through the cracked door. Louis was sat on his own bed, taking his socks off with one hand and scrolling through his phone with the other.

Harry knocked gently on the door frame and waited for Louis to look up.

“Can I come in?” he asked, then.

“Haz, hey,” Louis said. He got up, dropped his socks on a pile of presumably dirty clothes by the door and his phone on his chest of drawers. “What’s up?” He sat on the wide beige armchair next to the bedside table and rested his feet on the bed.

Harry sat facing him at the foot of it, hugging one of his knees to his chest. “I was wondering if we could talk?”

Louis fixed him with a stern look. “Did you make an appointment?” The hint of a smile appeared in the corners of his lips.

Harry rolled his eyes and laughed. “C’mon, I’m being serious.”

“Just talk, Christ.” Louis chuckled and waved one of his hands.

“’S about the lease…” Harry said.

“What about it?”

“Well, it’s up in a few weeks.” Harry bit his lip. “I got a house, Lou.”

“That’s great! Good on ya, lad. And you were so worried you wouldn’t like anything.” Louis smiled. “Drove Louise crazy, I reckon. Wheresit?”

“Hampstead Heath” Harry made a face. “Lay it on me.”

Louis snorted. “Posh… then again, who’s surprised? Can’t say I’m any better, though. Did you see the size of my new gaff?”

Nope. Harry had steadily avoided looking up Louis’s new house. Just like he’d steadily avoided everything involving Louis (outside of like, band things) for the past several weeks. It’d all started with Louis jetting off on holiday with Eleanor to France right after tour ended, then his family joining them, then Louis boasting about the soppy cake he’d got for her birthday. It just kept escalating, and Harry found himself needing to take a step back (or fifteen).

The more serious Louis and Eleanor got, the more numb Harry felt. The sharp pain from the beginning had begun to wane. The huge gash of his heart was now a giant case of scar tissue. Their _intimate meetings_ had become more and more sparse. When the band had just moved into Princess Park, Harry and Louis had spent virtually every night they had in London sleeping in the same bed. Now Louis would be constantly at Zayn’s, while Harry had escalated from sleeping over at Nick’s often to barely coming back home.

The band had also grown enough that they didn’t have to share hotel rooms when staying abroad, and it was only very occasionally that Harry and Louis paid a visit to each other. Their friendship hadn’t suffered _per se_ , though there was a lot more distance between them now.

Harry was still gone for Louis, but he’d stopped daydreaming about the day Louis would wake up and realise who he really wanted to be with, leave his girlfriend behind and profess his undying love for him. It was the kind of hopelessly in love where ‘hopelessly’ took a whole new meaning.

Harry’d purged his feelings by furiously writing down increasingly depressing concepts about unrequited love in his journal, which had helped immensely.

The point was, that though avoiding Louis had made it easier to deal with his day-to-day life without feeling like someone had carved his heart out, the lease _was_ about to end, and they were both about to move out. It was another nail in the coffin of the relationship that never would be. It drowned even further the voice of the small flicker of hope Harry couldn’t quite get rid of. Harry had thought that maybe today they could… what? They could what? Now he couldn’t remember.

Louis’s nonchalant attitude about it was also a stab in Harry’s wounded ego. It topped the romantic rejection with a dash of platonic indifference. A perfect combo, really. Harry wanted to set himself on fire. Next time someone asked him how he stayed so grounded, he’d explain to them exactly how much it’d affected him to spend day in and day out with his unrequited love for almost two years. Harry liked to believe that his parents’ upbringing and his own personality were wholly responsible for his normalcy and politeness, but somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if the constant dejection he felt didn’t contribute to his lack of _big-headedness_. Metaphorical, of course. His physical head _was_ quite big.

Anyway… Louis hadn’t even noticed Harry’d been pulling away. Or if he had, he hadn’t said anything. So, that was great.

He sighed. He’d got lost in his thoughts and Louis was looking at him funny. “Sorry,” Harry said. “I zoned out.”

Louis laughed. “I can tell,” he said. “’S the house nice? You need to give me a tour. Or like, tell me _something_ about your life. Feel like we’ve not talked in ages.”

So Louis _wasn’t_ pretending not to notice. He had. He simply… didn’t make much of it. Well, that was somehow worse.

“The house needs some renovations, so I’ll probably stay in a hotel ’till it’s done, but it’s a dream,” Harry said. He picked at a loose thread in the cuff of his jeans. “Other than that —” he shrugged “— not much to tell, really, I don’t think.”

“Didn’t you go to a gay bar the other day?” Louis asked. “Zayn’s mentioned something about it.”

“Well, yeah?” Harry furrowed his brows. “But that’s not like, a new development or anything. Aimee took me to my first one back when we were in New York and I’ve just been going to a few of them here in London. ’S cool.”

Louis frowned. “Who’s Aimee? Are you going with Grimshaw? Pulled yet?”

“Aimee Phillips,” Harry said. Jesus, Louis knew _nothing_ about him. He swallowed. “Yeah, I mostly go out with Grimmy. And depends on what you mean by ‘pulling’. Snogged a few, couple of handies, one very sloppy blowjob. That’s about it.”

“Would’ve bet you had a secret boyfriend with how little you’re letting me get my leg over.” Louis nudged Harry’s thigh with his foot.

“You wouldn’t be getting your leg over with me at all if I had a boyfriend,” Harry said.

Louis snorted again. “Right.”

Louis had a lot of good qualities, but the absolute smugness and self-assurance he had when it came to Harry were nothing short of infuriating.

“Anyway.” Harry got up. What a pointless conversation. What was he expecting? “Gotta have a shower.”

“Gonna go clubbing?” Louis asked with a smile.

Why did he have to have such a pretty smile? Why did he have to sound so genuinely interested all of a sudden? The whiplash would one day kill Harry on the spot.

“No.” Harry stretched his back, rolled his shoulders. “On a date.”

Louis’s eyebrows shot up. “Really? With who? Lad or lass?”

“Some friend of Liam’s, a girl,” Harry said.

“Well, that’s a great development!” Louis stood up and patted Harry’s shoulder. It probably wasn’t patronising, but it sure felt like it. “You need to put yourself out there a bit more. You’re a catch, Haz,” he said with a grin.

Harry looked at  him with disbelief. “Thanks,” he deadpanned. _‘Fuck you,’_ he thought.

He left the room as fast as he could without outright running and promised himself that he wouldn't, _he would not_ , cry in the shower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Same


	9. December 2012

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I don't know.

**December 2012**

Harry looked to his right, saw Taylor fucking Swift holding his hand, and felt even fainter. What the hell was his life? He closed his eyes, focused on the tightening and softening of Taylor’s fingers on his, and let the sound of the tattoo gun’s needle lull him into relaxation.

He wondered how many tattoos it’d take to get used to the woozy feeling that came with getting them. Perhaps he’d never get there. This one in particular was one of the biggest ones he’d got so far, with his chest piece being the only exception, so the process was getting long, not that he minded.

So many people often asked him about his tattoos, what they meant, if there was a story to them, if they followed a logical path. Harry didn’t really have answers for them, not short ones, at least. Because some of them were just random drawings or symbols he’d liked. Some of them went deep into who he was as a person. Some of them symbolised his family or his friends. Some of them were deliberate and thought about, but some of them were spontaneous and spur of the moment.

When Harry first started getting tattoos, he brought back home a design book from his favourite artist and browsed it with Louis. Louis had quickly pointed out at the nautical-themed ones and explained how much he liked that motive and how much meaning it could have behind it, and Harry instantly fell in love.

They were mostly common designs, but the explanations behind them were fascinating, and there seemed to be countless pieces he could get. He specifically liked how he himself related to old sailors, who would leave their homes behind for work and embark in adventures overseas without ever really losing their roots.

At that point, Louis kept claiming to be averse to tattoos, but he quickly seemed to come around after seeing Harry and Zayn decorate their bodies, and it wasn’t long before he started thinking of getting some himself.

These days, tattoos were one of the only safe topics in their friendship. Eleanor was out of the question, and for some reason so was Taylor (who Louis seemed to have issues with, though he never explained why). They only ever had sex on very rare occasions, and it usually was when the band forced them to spend long periods of time together (and mostly when they were under the influence of either alcohol or, lately, weed), so that was another thing to scratch off the list of things they could discuss. Songwriting, which they’d began to do a few months back for their second album, was dangerous territory. And fans. That one was probably the worst.

Fans had noticed their closeness quite early on, and insisted on ‘shipping’ them as a couple. Everyone, including them, had found the whole thing hilarious at the beginning.  Their friends, family and the band staff either had no clue what was happening behind closed doors, or, if they did, they simply dismissed it as meaningless shagging. Louis had even encouraged some of the most outrageous rumours back then, but the more they grew, the more annoyed he started to seem at them.

Harry suspected most of his annoyance came from guilt. From the role those rumours pushed onto Eleanor. From knowing they weren’t completely unfounded. They got asked a few times about them in interviews, and Louis denied them as politely as he could. But then people, as people do when they’re denied something, started digging their heels deeper, which pushed Louis more and more into annoyance territory.

He started lashing out on Twitter with Eleanor and Stan and sometimes his mother, backing him up more and more. That made fans more and more interested in the subject, which resulted in them harassing everyone that’d ever crossed paths with either Harry or Louis into confirming it. Louis’s sisters, not too pleased with the sudden burst of absurd questions about their brother, started denying it themselves. Then it was Liam’s turn, then it was Harry’s own sister.

It seemed like the more everyone around them started denying things, the more the group of fans that didn’t believe them grew. The more ridiculous their theories became. The more passionate they became about them.

Harry realised from the get go that there was no point in engaging with it. On top of the fact that the idea of having to say that he and Louis weren’t romantically involved made him sick (because they weren’t, but it was all that Harry wanted from life at that point), he just didn’t think constantly fighting people on it was a solution.

In the past few months, the tension had grown so much that it filled every room Harry and Louis were in together. Harry had started questioning his every move when it came to Louis. Before, he’d behaved with him the same way than he did with his other band mates (or so he thought), but people had clearly seen through it, so maybe he should be more careful? He noticed as he rolled back his interactions, that Louis started doing the same. And Harry didn’t know if it was in reaction to his decision or if it was one Louis made himself. The latter thought made Harry feel a little faint.

The only silver lining when it came to fans’ theories, was that they were so over the top and exaggerated that no one surrounding them seemed to believe them. There were those who knew they had casual shags here and there (Harry’s mum, sister, best friends, their band mates and closest staff members, perhaps some of Louis’s friends and family, though Harry couldn’t be so sure), and then there were those who had no clue. Both groups tended to openly mock the idea of them being a secret couple, of every girl they were seen with being a paid beard, of their mostly laid-back management being behind a number of conspiracies and what they called _damage control_. With the exception of ‘Harry’s people’, the ones that either guessed how Harry felt or knew because he'd outright told them, of course. They were mostly silent on the subject, didn’t find it funny at all.

So, yeah… Harry and Louis had found themselves in a very awkward position. There was still a sense of familiarity and they still enjoyed each other’s company (and their chemistry, on the very few occasions they allowed themselves to fall back onto it, was undeniable), but they would quickly find themselves surrounded by uncomfortable silence when they were alone.

A few weeks back, they were having a long round of interviews for their newest album, when there was a technical problem with their microphones and they had to make a pause for a while. They were told it’d take about two hours, so Zayn took advantage of it to go pick up Perrie, Liam to nap on a nearby sofa and Niall to call his girlfriend and have a lengthy conversation.

Harry and Louis had been awkwardly left to their own devices, because Louise and Caroline, their stylists who would usually serve as a distraction, had been dismissed early in the morning. It’d been a while since the last time Harry and Louis had hooked up, about three or so weeks, and they hadn’t really been alone together since then. They’d began talking about their families, but that was a dead-end topic as there wasn’t really any news either of them could share. Then they’d talked about their upcoming Madison Square Garden gig, how excited they were about it, how cool it was that Ed Sheeran was joining them. Silence.

Louis had then asked for Harry’s swallow tattoos, if they’d hurt as much as it looked (which he’d already asked, but well…) because he was thinking of getting a chest piece himself. Harry had replied that yes, they had, but they were worth it because he loved them, and then the safest topic of conversation was finally on course.

Harry then told Louis about wanting a tattoo that would directly reference ‘home’, his mum, his sister, his town, his childhood friends. A tattoo that would reference how he hadn’t really changed, what his priorities would always be. Louis was in awe. He said the idea was fantastic and that he’d probably nick it for himself and then they’d started browsing Google on a nearby laptop to find the perfect design for each of them.

And here Harry was, getting it. An English ship on his left arm. He knew Louis had chosen a compass, and the last time they’d talked, he’d said he’d get it at Shamrock on their upcoming trip to Los Angeles (this one).

Harry loved him, still, without his rose coloured glasses, with a lot less intensity, with a more mature and realistic outlook on their future, but he loved him. The problem was that he didn’t want connect this tattoo, a tattoo that represented something so dear to him, to that feeling. He wanted that ship to remind him of the home he had, of the home he’d _always_ have, not of the boy — man now — that had repeatedly broken his heart for two years. So, as soon as their plane touched Los Angeles, he’d called Taylor and asked her if she could come with. It was the middle of the night and there were fans everywhere, but Harry had succeeded in not allowing Louis to go anywhere near it.

He opened his eyes and looked at Taylor again. Things with her were… weird. Sometimes. Most of the time they weren’t. Most of the time he’d forget that they were set up by their labels, encouraged to hang out and be seen together for publicity. Most of the time he’d forget those people didn’t care if Harry liked her or not (he did), if he enjoyed her company or not (he really did), if they were actually hooking up or not (here and there…). But then he’d remember, and he’d remember how famous she was, what she was famous for, how ridiculed they were being in the media, how their ‘relationship’ had no future whatsoever.

Those times, he couldn’t help the pang in his chest, the one that yearned for something normal, someone that would want him for himself, without the promise of anything other than his love and company in return. Those times, he couldn’t help the tears that sprang to his eyes at the reminder of how long he’d fooled himself into believing he could someday have that with Louis. Those times, he couldn’t help feeling heartbroken all over again at the knowledge that it’d never, ever happen.


	10. June 2013

**June 2013**

Harry felt a hand on his shoulder and heard someone whispering faintly, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. He hid his face in his fluffy pillow and stretched his toes like yoga had taught him. As the white noise from sleep wore off, the whispers got a little clearer and he could instantly tell they belonged to Louis.

He craned his neck to the side and peeked out of one eye. “Hmm?”

“Haz,” Louis said softly. “Are you up yet? D’you need me to shake you a bit more?”

“’M up,” he said, still in a haze. “What time’s it?”

“Half five,” Louis said. “We’ve got soundcheck in a minute.”

“Oh, okay. Thanks.” Harry propped himself up on an elbow, careful not to knock his head with the top bunk, and rubbed his eyes with his knuckles.

He looked at Louis then, who was crouched next to him, forearms resting on his thighs, staring at him intently. “Are you waiting for a tip or summat?” he asked.

Louis didn’t laugh. He sat with his back against the other row of bunks and his knees up. He still looked at Harry funny, but didn’t say anything.

Harry frowned. “What?”

“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Louis said. “I’m like, trying to find the words but they’re just not there.”

“Ok…ay?” Harry looked at him sceptically. “Is it gonna take long? ’Cos my back’s killing me. I really wanna stand up and you’re kind of in the middle.”

Louis got to his feet and walked towards the bus’ lounge wordlessly. He dropped himself on one of the sofas unceremoniously and waved to the spot in front of him, as if asking Harry to sit as well.

Harry ran his fingers through his hair and obeyed. He was in his pants, still, and his mouth tasted like nap, which didn’t bode well for what seemed to be an impromptu important conversation. They hadn’t had one of those in months, perhaps even a year. Why now? What?

Louis cleared his throat. “Don’t let me go,” he said. Before Harry could react he added, “The song. The one you wrote. Don’t Let Me Go…”

“What?” Harry asked, but he didn’t hear his own voice because his heart was beating between his ears.

“It’s leaked. I dunno, fans found it. ’S like, all over social media.” Louis licked his lips. “Thought you ought to hear it from like, someone like me rather than having a heart attack when you logged onto Twitter.”

“Right.” Harry looked at an undefined spot on the floor and tried to get himself together.

“When did you write it?” Louis asked. “I didn’t know…”

Harry lifted his gaze and locked eyes with Louis. He shrugged one shoulder. “A long time ago. Last year.” He exhaled loudly.

Louis nodded. “I didn’t know,” he repeated. “You never told me.”

“I’ve got tons of demos. You do too, I presume,” Harry said. What was Louis talking about?

“That’s not what I mean.” Louis huffed a breath. “That you felt that way, I mean. I didn’t know.” He swallowed. “I mean, it’s about…”

 _Me_ , he didn’t say. _Us_.

“It was a long time ago,” Harry said.

“Doesn’t matter. You still felt that way and…” Louis shook his head in a defeated gesture. “I didn’t know.”

 _Yes, you did_ , Harry thought. _Yes, you had to._

“Okay, well.” Harry shrugged again. “What do you want me to say?”

“I asked Julian if you’d sent him any other demos. For the next album, I mean,” Louis said. “Told me you’d sent a few. He picked a couple.”

“I know,” Harry said.

“We’re gonna start recording them super soon.” Louis cleared his throat again. “Should I expect more of… that?”

Harry laughed, shrugged for the third time. “Yeah.”

“Harry…”

“What?”

“Were you gonna tell me?” Louis asked. “Were you just gonna let me go to the studio blindsided?”

Harry snorted, shook his head.

“What?” Louis asked. “What’s so funny?”

“I don’t owe you anything,” Harry said. “Why does it matter anyway?”

“Everyone’s gonna know, Harry,” Louis said. “Everyone’s gonna talk about it. Fans are treating it like a love letter to me. And it’s only gonna get worse once the album comes out. What were you thinking?”

“Everyone that could make the connection already knows, Louis. D’you think they’re blind?” Harry sat up and laced his fingers together on top of his lap. “If you think they don’t talk about it, then you’re very naive… Fans already make everything I do about you anyway. Do you seriously think a song or three are gonna change anything?” Harry huffed. “What was I thinking? That the best music — the best art — comes from the most sincere places and that I take this whole thing seriously enough to want to excel at it. When I sat down to write, that’s what came to me, so that’s what I wrote. And instead of censoring myself, like I’d done all my semi-adult life, I decided to fuck it and be honest, okay? I couldn’t tell you half of the shit I told to that piano. It felt _nice_ to finally be able to say it as it was.” He took a deep breath. “It’s kind of shitty of you to come here and scold me for it as if I were a child. I have a right to tell my story. And _you_ have no right to put those fucking rumours above my well-being. Fuck that!” He stood up, rubbed a hand down his face, bit his lip. “Are those rumours really the end of the world? People on the internet are wrong all the time, but you only seem to care about it when it involves… this. Is it really that much of a problem for people to think you might have feelings for me? Do you need to be so fucking dramatic about it all the time?”

“It’s not about people thinking I have feelings for you.” Louis stood up as well. “I don’t give a fuck about that. I can’t tolerate it when they cause problems for my girlfriend. When they spend all their time insulting her. When they email or call her university telling them she’s a fraud, asking them to investigate. When they call my mum a liar. When they harass my little sisters.”

Harry frowned. “That’s all terrible and you know I agree with you. Do you think my family doesn’t suffer from that? Do you not remember the bullshit they said to Taylor? What’s that got to do with me writing a song, Louis? I didn’t name it after your initials. Give me a fucking break.”

“You’re fuelling the fire,” Louis said.

“No, I’m not. The fire went out of control the minute you tried to put it out by fanning it.” Harry placed his hands on his hips. “’S too late. It’s done. There’s nothing we can do to stop it now. Rumours about me and Grimmy started almost at the same time. D’you know why they never got out of hand? Because I never screamed how fake they were from the rooftops.”

“That’s a terrible example,” Louis said. “I’m not sure if you’ve checked your email today, but we got sent the preview of the GQ interview. All of us. All parts of it. I know they asked you about Grimshaw in it. They asked you if you were bisexual.”

“And? I replied to a simple question,” Harry said. “And I’ll bet you my house, as long as neither me nor Grim start going off on Twitter about it, it won’t go anywhere other than some harmless wishful thinking from fans.”

“So now it’s my fault?” Louis raised his eyebrows. “Because I went off on Twitter about it, now me and my family deserve this treatment?”

Harry sighed. “Of course not…”

“Well it sounds  like —”

“I’m just saying my songs won’t affect it!” Harry put his hands up in annoyance. “I’m just saying that ship has sailed. Everything we do or say is gonna be twisted to fit that now. I haven’t looked, so I’m blindly guessing here, but I’d wager they’re not speculating on how terribly dramatic our alleged relationship is, right? That they’re twisting the song to be simply romantic. That they’re ignoring how sad it is and stripping it away from its real meaning, yeah?”

Louis nodded. “From the quick glance I took…”

“And if you write your girlfriend a thousand love songs, they’ll all be about me, won’t they?” Harry said. “So are you not gonna write them to not fuel the fire?”

Louis bit the inside of his cheek, didn’t say anything.

“Stop being a fucking tit and leave me alone, then,” Harry whispered. He sat back down, hid his face in his hands and huffed a breath.

He felt Louis sitting beside him and putting a hand between his shoulder blades. “I’m sorry,” Louis said. “I panicked. I’m sorry. You’re right.”

Harry dropped his hands on his lap, fiddled with the hem of his underwear. What a pathetic state to have this conversation. “Maybe I should’ve given you a heads up. About the songs,” he said. “I didn’t know how to go about it. Sorry.”

“I feel like I should mention it again…” Louis looked at Harry in the eyes. His hand was still heavy on his back. “I didn’t _know_.”

Harry scratched behind his right ear. “So you’ve said.”

“I didn’t, Haz,” Louis said. “You should’ve told me that, at least.”

“Well, it’s done now.” Harry looked at Louis and gave him a sad smile.

“Is it all gone?” Louis asked. And Harry couldn’t read his expression.

“Yes,” he said. _Not entirely_ , he thought.

Louis dropped his hand and nodded. “Was it like, overnight? Boom, over it?”

Harry snorted a laugh. “No, took ages. Wrote Don’t Let Me Go in November last year and the feeling was already a memory. Like —” he gestured vaguely with his hands “— I still felt things, obviously, but it wasn’t as intense as that song sounds. Not any more.”

Louis blew a raspberry. “Okay,” he said. “I think, still, maybe we…” He shook his head from side to side pensively. “Maybe it’s time for us to stop, anyway.”

They’d already stopped, for the most part. They hadn’t slept together in a month. Harry had promised himself they wouldn’t again, after the last time, and this time (the millionth time he’d made that promise), he’d intended to keep it. He didn’t tell Louis that.

“Yeah,” he said instead. “I agree.”

“I’m sorry,” Louis said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t know. I’m sorry if I led you on.”

 _If_. That was funny. Harry didn’t tell Louis that either.

“It’s fine, Lou,” he said, even though it wasn’t.

“Are you okay?” Louis asked. And it was the first time he did, in this context, at least.

Harry nodded and smiled. “I am.” That wasn’t a lie.

“And what about the interview bit? GQ?”

Harry sighed. “Oh, still annoyed about that.”

“Do you wanna talk about it?” Louis patted Harry’s thigh. Somehow, he had an ability to make those touches feel patronising.

“No,” Harry said. _Yes_ , he thought, _just not with you_. “I’ll be okay.”

“Soundcheck’s in about two seconds,” Louis said. “You might want to put some clothes on.” He got up and shot him a smile.

“Ugh, normal conventions of society,” Harry said. “Do you think I have time to give my mum a ring? I haven’t got my watch on and my mobile’s still in the bunk. No idea what time it is.”

Louis checked his phone. “You have like, ten minutes. If you ring her while getting dressed I suppose you’ll be fine.” He stretched his arms above his head. “I’ll leave you to that, then. See ya in a few.”

Harry waved him off and hurried to his bunk. He put the first jeans he could find and dialled Nick’s number, then put the phone on speaker as he rummaged his holdall for a shirt.

“Hiya,” Nick said. “Good… afternoon? Evening? Where even are you? I’m lost. Good day?”

Harry got his head through the gape of the shirt without unbuttoning it, then his arms through the sleeves. “Miami,” he said. “Afternoon. Close to evening. Hi!”

“You sound well enough for someone who got his heart ripped from his chest and exposed to the entire world.”

“Meh.” Harry grabbed his phone, walked towards the lounge again, sat back on the sofa and dropped the phone next to his thighs. He scanned the floor for his boots. “I was already mentally ready for the others to come out. What’s five months earlier gonna change?”

“The world has toughened you up, Popstar.”

Harry found his boots below one of the end tables and stretched to grab them. “Reckon I’m Rambo now.” He started trying to put the first shoe on without undoing its zip. He was unsuccessful.

“You watch too many rom coms,” Nick said. “That reference is so outdated it precedes your birth.”

“The chat with Louis was lovely,” Harry said, because he could talk nonsense with Nick all day, but he only had a couple of minutes left. He undid the zips and got his boots on properly.

“Oh no.”

“Have to go in a sec,” Harry said. “I’ll give you another ring after the show. Will you be up, you think?”

“At 5 AM, you mean?” Nick laughed. “I’m on break, Popstar. No, but ring me anyway.”

“Okay,” Harry said. “GQ sent us an email with the preview of the interview. Was meant to call you earlier but took a nap instead, soz.”

“’S it as bad as we thought it’d be?”

“Somehow, it sounds even worse in print.” Harry trudged back to his bunk, went through his holdall and grabbed his toothbrush. He put it in the back pocket of his jeans.

“Well, I’m featured in a GQ article. I’m ecstatic.”

Harry rolled his eyes fondly. “You’ve been featured there before.”

“Not in the cover story,” Nick said. “In all seriousness. How are you?”

“Hate it, Grim.” Harry sighed. “I don’t know what part of that whole interview is the worst. It’s all a big blob of disgustingness. Is that a word?”

“You didn’t do sixth form and you’re pretty. It can be a word if you want it to,” Nick said. “I reckon the bit where you lie about your sexuality could be seen as the worst, huh? And don’t tell me again how it’s not technically a lie because we both know you’d never just say ‘no’ if you had to answer that question honestly.”

“No, I know.” Harry bit the inside of his cheek. He looked at his reflection in one of the mirrors that hung next to the bunks. His hair was a mess and his eyes were swollen from sleep. He needed a hat. And sunglasses. “What was I gonna reply, though?” he said. “‘Yes, bisexual is, perhaps, not the word I’d use, but it’d be correct to describe me as such. Also, Nicholas Peter Grimshaw and I are not and were never in a relationship, but we’ve exchanged bodily fluids on occasion,” he said in a snotty tone.

“That’s exactly what you should’ve said.” Nick cackled. “You could’ve also added, ‘I’ve only ever slept with two people because I’m an idiot and my band mate is a twat that held my heart hostage for years. Of course, by ‘slept with’ I mean penetrative sex, because lemme tell you, my dick’s been in several mouths’. I reckon that’d be the best selling issue in GQ’s history.”

“I can still call and correct them.” Harry laughed too. He put on deodorant, then a bit of cologne. “Gotta go like, right now, Grim, but I’ll call you later. Leave your ringer on.”

“Always for you, my precious,” Nick said. “I won’t hold it against you if instead of ringing me you pull some cute lad or lass and shag someone proper. To take it out on Tomlinson, GQ _and_ whoever the twat that leaked your song was.”

Harry smiled. “Maybe. Okay, hanging up now. Love ya.”

“You too, Popstar,” Nick said. “If you catch me drunk later, you may get me to confess how happy I am at how far you’ve come. And I don’t mean your career.”


	11. September 2013

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hate chapters like this one because there's so much information to cram in such a short timestamp, but at the same time, writing a timestamp for every little thing is even harder and more tiresome for you. This one and December 2012 are my least favourite ones because it's like exposure, exposure, exposure. It's basically to keep you up to speed on what's going on at this time. I think this is the last one of this type, though.
> 
> Another problem I have with chapters like this one is the tenses. I usually write in present, so going to an event in the past is easier, but for some reason I decided to write this story in past tense and my god, had had is annoying.
> 
> Anyway, have this cringe fest. Hope the two people reading this are liking it!

**September 2013**

A loud, boisterous knock on the door interrupted Harry just as he was about to turn on the last page of the chapter he was reading. He put the book down with a frown, but before he could ask who it was, there was another knock.

“Open up, Styles!” Louis shouted. And… what?

Harry walked towards the door lazily. The loud knocking continued.

“Stop,” Harry said. He opened the door, catching Louis mid-knock, and heaved a sigh. “What can I help you with?”

It was their day off and Harry had gone out and wound up proper sloshed last night, which meant that, at noon, he was still hungover and a bit lacking on his social abilities.

“Move, so I can get in,” Louis said, proceeding to push his way inside without waiting. He then sat down on the sofa of Harry’s penthouse and stared at him expectantly. “D’you have alcohol? I think this conversation calls for a shot.”

Harry looked at him, dumbfounded. He closed the door and trudged to the minibar, shaking his head as if to clear it. He grabbed a mini bottle of vodka and threw it in Louis’s direction, then grabbed one for himself.

He was wearing swimming shorts because his hyperactive personality didn’t allow him a morning in and he’d gone for a swim earlier, but other than that, he was still shirtless and barefoot. A vast contrast with Louis who was fully clothed, with skinny jeans and all. It made sense, of course, since Louis refused to stay in hotels himself, which meant that to be here right now, he would’ve had to go through all the trouble of changing and walking from wherever they’d left the bus parked. Harry found himself wondering once again, _what_? But mostly _why?_

He sat opposite Louis on one of the wide swede armchairs and took a sip of his vodka. Hair of the dog and all that. “What can I help you with?” he repeated.

“I feel like I don’t know you any more,” Louis said. He downed the whole bottle of mini vodka, shook his head, dropped the bottle on the table in front of him. “I feel like we don’t talk and I don’t know you at all. We used to be best friends and now we’re like, strangers. And I’ve been feeling like this for months but, like, I dunno, it was weird to bring it up. I didn’t know how. So I didn’t. And now I’m just wondering if it’s too late. If it’s my fault. What did I do wrong?”

Harry gulped down another shot of vodka, shrugged. “We grew apart. It happens.”

“Bullshit.” Louis crossed his arms. “Bullshit, don’t give me that. You’re making it worse. Just give it to me straight.”

Harry bit down the easy joke he would’ve totally made with an actual friend of his and shrugged again. “I don’t know what you want me to say or why you chose today to have this conversation.”

“That photo of yours, the one that came online yesterday, the one with the girl straddling you,” Louis said. “All I know about her is what I’ve seen on the media and what bloody update accounts say on Twitter. I brushed it off ’cos I figured it wasn’t serious but looking at that photo now I don’t know. I don’t know if you’re just friends, or shagging or if you went and got yourself a girlfriend. And it hit me that I’ve no idea about anything concerning your life. I know more about how your mum’s doing than you.”

“We’re just friends,” Harry said. Because it was the truth, not because he wanted to reassure Louis. “We did a whole stupid photo shoot posing. It’s taken out of context. I wouldn’t just snog a girl when there’s people like, sat there, watching and taking photos, in the middle of the afternoon, sober. That’d be the strangest snog sesh in the world.”

“That’s not my point, Harry.” Louis huffed in exasperation. “My point is that I’ve no idea because we don’t talk. I don’t bloody care what she is to you. I care that I don’t know…”

“And I don’t know what you want me to say.” Harry licked his lips. “You were as much part of us growing apart as I was. How come you’re here asking _me_ as if I was the sole responsible for the status of our friendship? I could turn it around, ask _you_ the same.”

“Fine, then let’s figure it out, if neither of us know.” Louis gestured with his hands in annoyance. “Let’s talk about it and come to a conclusion. Do you think it’s because we stopped shagging? Because it does seem to be like — it seems to have started around there.”

“I think it was a combination of a lot of things.” Harry drew one of his knees up and hugged it to his chest. “We grew apart naturally. We changed. We don’t enjoy the same things any more and it makes it harder to connect. There’s the whole Larry thing, which, I dunno. I feel awkward sometimes…” He sighed. “And I think it’s not that we stopped shagging, Louis. It’s that I fell out of love. I used to love the fuck out of you — in a romantic way — and it got tied up in our friendship and in every single one of our interactions, so when I fell out of love, it just…”

“You fell out of… friendship?” Louis said. “You don’t _want_ to be my friend any more?”

Harry winced. “When you put it that way it sounds awful.”

“Forget about how it sounds.” Louis took his shoes off and rearranged himself on the sofa to sit cross-legged. “I’m a big boy and I can handle it. If you don’t like me as a person or if you think you’re better than me now, I’d rather just know.”

Harry rolled his eyes and shook his head.

“No, don’t act like what I’m saying is ridiculous,” Louis said. “You’re this big shot superstar now. Do you know the difference there is between you and the rest of us?” He sounded… earnest. “I don’t give a fuck, Haz. It happened, whatever. To be honest, I hadn’t considered the possibility of you ditching us because of that before, because that’s very much not you. But I don’t really know you any more, do I? So can you really blame me for asking?”

“Yeah, I can. Because you know the answer.” Harry dropped his foot on the floor and crossed his arms. “I haven’t changed, have I? Do you see me acting conceited or big-headed? Have I ever seriously given you any reason to believe I give a shit about celebrity status or anything of the sort? Have I not talked about how obviously fickle it all is since we first started? We grew up and changed, mate. We both did, but I’m not here doubting of your core values because of it. I know you haven’t changed the essence of who you are as a person. The fact that you’re even considering the possibility of me ditching you because I think I’m more… whatever. It’s absurd and insulting. I fell out of love and our friendship suffered because of it. And that, coupled with everything else, made us grow apart. It’s not brain surgery. It doesn’t have to be this dramatic event.”

What annoyed Harry the most was the fact that he’d seen this coming a mile away a year before, and he’d taken steps to prevent it at the beginning, but he soon felt out of his depth and alone in his attempts. Louis had seemed oblivious to the whole thing the whole time and he’d never made an effort to have serious conversations with Harry before. They’d always found themselves mending already broken fences instead of preventing them from breaking in the first place. Now they’d just broken beyond repair.

It affected Harry’s dynamic with the rest of his band as well, because how could it not? Without ever having an argument or a discussion about it, Zayn was more often than not on Louis’s side with Niall more on Harry’s side and Liam spinning around in the middle, metaphorically (and sometimes physically) scratching his head in confusion. It didn’t mean that Harry and Zayn couldn’t get on, or that Niall and Louis were now not as close. It was just the natural division of things now.

Harry was so hyper-aware of it that it made him feel a little guilty, and he’d, on occasion, take a step back to let the other four bond together without the disruption of his and Louis’s broken fence in the middle. He’d hang out with the staff or the crew and he’d have fun. It was fine. And he liked being alone sometimes anyway. He liked reading and watching old rom coms. And it gave him the opportunity to catch up with his friends all over the world or with his mum, his dad, his sister.

Of course, not everyone thought it was fine, because people would often attempt to get him to make ‘friends his own age’ by introducing him to someone they were somehow connected to. ‘The sister of my old neighbour’s dentist is twenty and lives around, Harry. Don’t you wanna go out and have some fun?’ They’d ask. And Harry, too polite to reject them, would agree.

Most of the times it was okay. He’d spend some time with people that were ‘his own age’ but had lives that were worlds different than his own. Sometimes they’d ooh and aah at him and his lifestyle and his stories. Sometimes they’d pretend not to have a clue who he was and act disinterested. It was mostly not a problem.

There was that one night where he went on a party bus in Oslo and one of the girls he met there started telling everyone he’d slept with her a week later, which was annoying, but luckily, only happened rarely. Then there was Paige and her New York city friends, who turned out to be dickheads.

He met Paige through the band’s photographer, Cal. She was the daughter of one of his friends, a little younger than Harry and an aspiring model. Harry had been a bit wary of her at first, but they hit it off great soon thereafter. She was funny and nice and didn’t act _special_ around him, which made all the difference in the world. He met some of her friends, and they’d seemed cool at the beginning, but soon revealed very unpleasant personality traits.

He didn’t hold it against Paige, though, who had been nothing but pleasant the whole time, so they became closer. After a while, Harry started considering her in a different light, started wondering if maybe they could be more. While he was on tour in Australia, they kept in touch, and he started giving thought to the idea that maybe when he came back to New York…

And then, yesterday, one of her arsehole friends posted that out of context photo and Paige freaked out. She called him in a panic, telling him she hadn’t planned it and it wasn’t her fault. Telling him to please not think less of her. And then the press picked up on it, and made the whole thing a giant mess.

Paige had been on the receiving end of a lot of hate from Harry’s fans (and from ‘Larry’ fans) since the very first day she and Harry were seen together. It wasn’t easy to navigate and it required a lot of patience on her part, but she seemed to handle it well. The new wave of attention, though, was surely to put a damp on things. It was a sort of ‘last straw’ moment for Harry.

He’d been approached by a man called Jeff Azoff a few weeks back, while they were promoting This Is Us in New York. The guy was in his late twenties and worked for One Direction’s touring agency. He’d told Harry that he’d been observing him for a while and was awed by his talent and charisma, that his current management company and label were using an outdated model of typical boy band front man on him, and that it’d do nothing for his future career.

Jeff had told Harry point blank that if he wanted to have a career further than the band, he could help out. It’d offended Harry, who’d automatically assumed Jeff had been sent by his label in an effort to convince him of sticking to their cunning plans of breaking up the band and having Harry be a solo star. A few different representatives from his label had approached him at different times, always with the same shtick. They wanted to ‘pull a Robbie Williams’ and have a bit of conflict to elevate both the band and Harry’s profile and, that way, multiply the avenues of revenue. Harry had told them (politely) to fuck off about thirteen times now; he’d told them he just didn’t have it in him to do something like that, but they were relentless.

In the end, though, it’d turned out that Jeff _did not_ secretly work for his label, and his help offer was not dependant on what Harry chose to do with his future. Eventually, his contract with his current management would run out, and Harry would need to find a new one, Jeff had said. A lot of band members had their own manager while still in the band, he’d added, so he didn’t need to think about his career beyond (though he thoroughly recommended it). In fact, Harry’s band mates should actually do it themselves as well if they wanted a chance at a better quality of career, he’d posited.

Jeff had lectured Harry on how incredibly diminishing the image approach Modest had taken was, how much of a disservice they were to him. He’d explained that it wasn’t because of malpractice, but rather, because they were in over their heads. They were too small to handle such a big band and they were doing the best they could. It just wasn’t enough. They weren’t taking care of Harry as a brand, but as _part_ of a brand, and they’d fallen in the terrible spiral of ‘every press is good press’ that could, according to Jeff, kill Harry’s future career. He’d said they could find a way around to get a retainer on the side with Harry until his contract ran out and then sign him properly. Also according to Jeff, waiting until December 2015 to make the move would be terrible for Harry’s career as the decisions Modest were making now would kill any chance of growth and uniqueness he’d ever had.

Harry had been much too polite to ask Jeff what his credentials were and where he got off making such big statements. He’d taken Jeff’s card but hadn’t planned on doing anything with it. And then he’d told his dad about the encounter, who had promptly smacked Harry round the head.

It turned out that Jeff was the son of a major music mogul who managed two Fleetwood Mac and The Eagles, two of Harry’s all time favourite bands. Des had advised Harry, quite vehemently, to reconsider Jeff’s offer. And reconsider Harry had.

He was planning on making a visit to Jeff’s office at CAA when they were next in Los Angeles, talking about it further, seeing where it could lead him. Now, with the whole Paige deal, Harry was almost sure he would accept.

Because no matter how much he’d begged to his label, to his PR company, to his management representatives in Australia, to _please_ kill the story about Paige, to please add the other pictures in context and say they were just two friends having a laugh. No matter how much he explained he wanted to preserve his friend (and his prospects of being more than friends, though he didn’t say that), they never listened. The band’s documentary was out in cinemas and all press was welcome. Harry was told he didn’t know what he was talking about and to sit pretty and shut up.

All over again, it was the approach the media had taken to Caroline and Taylor and how Harry was pushed to take advantage of it by his label, and how Modest hadn’t stepped in to object despite the fact that it was their job to do so. It was that story about Harry breaking up a marriage at seventeen. It was the story of him hooking up with the main girl in their What Makes You Beautiful video, simply because he’d jokingly said she was fit. It was their complete inability to spin stories in his favour and how it’d resulted in him looking like an airheaded womaniser. It was, once again, their complete lack of care by not blacklisting sensitive topics with GQ. It was them pushing Harry constantly to be more present on social media, no matter how much he hated it and how fake it felt. It was the lack of care during fan mobbing at hotels and airports. It was them insisting he had to tone it down with his outfits, despite the fact that his choices were hardly bold (or at least, not half as bold as he’d like them to be). It was that, now that he was told what the issue was by Jeff, he could finally see the incompetence of the trifecta of companies managing him and the band.

If Jeff could help with that, then Harry would take it.

Louis snapped his fingers to get Harry’s attention. “I don’t know where you went, but I need you here. You say it doesn’t have to be dramatic, but to me it is because I don’t understand how you not being _in love_ with me has to result in us not being friends. It doesn’t seem right.”

“I really don’t wanna have an argument, Louis,” Harry said.

“So there is a reason…” Louis raised his eyebrows and nodded encouragingly. “Spill it out, Styles.”

Harry huffed. “I didn’t just… fall out of love, just like that. I think a lot of it had to do with how things developed. How you — the way we like, were?”

“Not following,” Louis said.

“Ugh.” Harry rubbed a hand down his face. “You were a right dickhead with me at times, Louis. You overlooked my feelings entirely and hurt me more than once. After a while of that it — it just, became this mess. I cried myself to sleep so many times that I think I ended up resenting you a little.” Or a lot. He didn't say that.

“What?” Louis opened and closed his mouth in surprise. “What are you talking about? How was I a dickhead? What did _I_ do to make you cry yourself to sleep? How was I responsible for _your_ feelings?”

“Because you knew and didn’t care?” Harry said. It felt so… liberating to finally say it out loud. “You knew how I felt and you knew you weren’t gonna do anything about it and you still kept sleeping with me.”

Louis laughed humourlessly. “You must be joking.”

“I’m most definitely not.”

“You _must_ be, though,” Louis said. “Because you always insisted everything was fine as it was. You didn’t tell me how you felt until it was over. How am I responsible for you not speaking? What kind of entitled bullshit is this? Do you think I can read your mind?”

“Louis, please,” Harry said, then rolled his eyes. “You played me, and you played Eleanor and you only cared about getting what you wanted. So excuse me if —”

“Stop talking about things you don’t know, Harry,” Louis said. “I never played Eleanor. She and I had an arrangement that I could sleep with you while I was on tour as long as I didn’t sleep with anyone else.” He smirked in triumph. “You didn’t know about that, huh? I wasn’t cheating. She was fine with it.”

“Do you not realise that this just furthers my point?” Harry rolled his lips inside his mouth and took a deep breath “I’m just gonna tell you a story,” he said. He sat up straighter and rolled his shoulders. “When I was ten, my mum had just divorced for the second time and we were having a rough time as a family. We didn’t quite have to eat soup for dinner every night, but there weren’t any luxuries in our tiny little flat. The second X-Men film had come out, and over Christmas there were all these adverts about its action figures, right? So I really really wanted at least one of them, at least Wolverine, for my birthday. I didn’t ask for one because I knew my mum couldn’t afford it, but I secretly kept this baseless hope that somehow she’d save enough money by the time February rolled around and she’d get me it.

“Of course, that didn’t happen.” Harry plays with the half-full mini bottle of vodka in his hands. “My mum got me clothes for my birthday — clothes that she knew I’d need anyway — and I was crushed to bits. I kept expecting another wrapped box to appear but it never did and my ten-year-old self wanted to go to my room and have a good and proper cry, but my house was filled with people that were there for me, so I couldn’t. Instead, I swallowed the tears and showed off my new trousers and blazer like they were exactly what I wanted because as sad as I was for not getting my Wolverine, I knew it’d just make me sadder to disappoint my mum and make her feel like she wasn’t enough…”

Harry cleared his throat before continuing, “I know for a fact you know this exact feeling because we’ve talked about this stuff, Louis. You’ve gone through it as well. But somehow you’ve managed to completely ignore that it’s exactly what I was doing all along. That me saying I didn’t need more, meant nothing. That being your side dish was never okay or enough for me, and that I swallowed countless tears.” He smiled sadly. “And you knew, you had to, because I’m not that good of an actor and you aren’t either. You’ve made compromises to stay with me before, you’ve stopped yourself from mentioning your girlfriend around me, you’ve declined calls from her because you were with me or looked apologetic when you had to take one.

“And on that note —” Harry swallowed the knot in his throat “—  you had to know that Eleanor was never okay with your arrangement. How could she be okay with it? How could she be okay when she had thousands of people yelling at her that I was your true love and your relationship with her was a farce? How could she be okay with it when she was on another continent for most of it?” Harry smiled sadly. “But just like you never stopped to consider that, you never stopped to consider _me_. It was just easier to hit reject on a phone call and wink at me and make my heart beat a thousand times a second and have me consider that maybe I was something special. It was just easier to tweet how much of a load of bullshit the idea of you and me together was and convince yourself it was enough to reassure her. It was just easier to do that than finally taking a stance and ending it with me.”

Throughout all of Harry’s rant, Louis looked smaller and smaller. At times it looked like he wanted to interject and interrupt, but he never actually attempted to. By the time Harry was finished, Louis was chewing on his lips and his eyes were filled with tears.

“Louis,” Harry said. “I was never gonna have this conversation because it’s done — it’s over for me. And I’m _fine_. I don’t blame you for everything. I know I’m responsible for putting myself through that for years. You’re not to blame for my decisions…” He exhaled loudly. “And I don’t want to hurt you just for the sake of it, but my responsibility in it doesn’t excuse yours, y’know? And since you asked…” Harry shrugged. “I tried to convince myself that you didn’t know, but I know you’re clever. And it’s just impossible for me to ignore it. You had to know that both Eleanor and I were just taking what you were offering, because a little bit of you was better than nothing. And that wasn’t fair for either of us.”

Louis nodded, cleared his throat, wiped his eyes with his knuckles. “Okay,” he said. “Okay. I’m not — I don’t think I can argue about this any longer.” He chewed on his lower lip. “I guess this answers the question of whether we can mend our friendship or not.”

“I don’t have a problem with you,” Harry said. “I don’t hate you, I’m not angry. I just think we’ve ran our course. We’re band mates and that’s always gonna come first, and I’d never do anything to jeopardise that, but too much has happened, and I don’t think we can mend it, no. I’m sorry, Louis.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [LINK](https://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=louis%20fiji%20until%3A2013-10-02&src=typd)


	12. September 2013 (Louis's point of view )

Louis trudged through the hotel’s hallways towards the lifts, called for them and put his shoes haphazardly as he waited. Luckily, the lift came up not a minute later and he got inside in a hurry. He pressed the button for the ground floor an fished his mobile out of his pocket.

Why the bloody hell were penthouses so far up?

He dialled Oli’s number and hit the call button, keeping an eye on the floor numbers going down.

“’Lo?” Oli said on the other side of the line after two rings.

“Hey, mate,” Louis said. The lift was on the tenth floor already. Good. “Were you up? What time’s it there?”

“’S like, 7, mate. Of course I’m up.” Oli snorted. “Did you need something specific or just hoping for a chat?”

“Yeah, I need a favour,” Louis said. “I need you to book a me a flight to the most immediate and close remote location you can find from Perth’s airport.”

“What the fuck is a close remote location, mate? Have you lost it?” Oli said, and Louis could tell he was smiling. There were also sounds of a laptop being booted on and typing. So efficient, Oli was.

“Oh, sod off.” Louis chuckled. The lift’s door opened in the fifth floor but there was no one outside. Thank god. Louis pressed the button and they closed again. “Anything that _sounds_ remote but that’s close enough for me to go from here and back to Melbourne in less than thirty hours.”

Oli fully laughed at that. “ _Why?”_

“I just need to clear my head. Anything?”

Some typing. A couple of seconds. “Perth and Melbourne are on opposite sides of Australia, Tommo. Did you know?” Oli said. “And Australia is a massive piece of land in the middle of the ocean. Anything that’s close enough from Perth is super far from Melbourne. I literally don’t know how to help you here.”

“I may not be that good at geography, lad, but I’ve been to Australia before. I’m literally here now. I know…” Louis sighed. “Okay, new plan. Look up flights that will get me on time for the show tomorrow in Melbourne and we’ll work from there.”

More sound of typing. A grunt. “That will get you on time for the show or for soundcheck? Because soundcheck might be impossible.”

The lift reached the ground floor and its doors opened. Louis basically sprinted in the direction of the back door, phone pressed tightly to his ear. “To the show then. They can do soundcheck without me once.”

“Um, Fiji sound good?” Oli laughed.

“Perfect.” Louis looked at the hotel concierge manning the back door and raised his eyebrows. They’d all been instructed to let the five members of the band roam around freely. Not that it mattered much, what with how split down the middle they were lately. Neither Louis nor Zayn went to hotels that often.

“I was kidding, Tommo,” Oli said on the phone. “It’s like, at least ten hours to get there from Perth. If I can even find a flight with just one stop this close.”

“Private plane,” Louis muttered as he was ushered outside. Thankfully, there weren’t any fans waiting through this door. “Can you hire me one for like, now? As soon as possible?”

“What?” Oli sounded worried. “Wait, are you serious? Why do you need to leave this badly? What happened? Just go to another Australian city, mate. This is ridiculous. You’ll spend a ton of money and more time on the plane than on land…”

The sun was way too bright for Louis’s mood. He sat next to the back door and heaved a deep sigh. “I need to physically get on a plane that crosses ocean, mate. I know it sounds ridiculous but I just — I just need it, okay? I’ll explain when I see you, or I’ll ring you when I actually land in Fiji if you want me to, but right now, I need you to hire me a private plane there and book me a flight back for tomorrow. And a hotel room for tonight, as well. Please? I’ll ask Don to drive me to the airport.”

Three years had come crushing down on him. He didn’t know up from down and what he felt about anything any more. He felt betrayed by Harry and by himself and he felt sad for the friendship that would cease to be. That _had_ ceased to be. It was too much, all at once. Things he’d never want to face being thrown at him with no warning. Was it with no warning? What did he think would happen coming here? That Harry wouldn’t call him on his bullshit when pressured to do just that? That he’d just say they could go back to being mates with no hard feelings? What? What was Louis hoping to accomplish? Because sitting near the back door of Harry’s hotel in the heat of Australia’s spring sun he couldn’t figure it out.

Was Harry right? Louis just didn’t know. He went back on everything that’d happened between them and couldn’t figure it out. Before this conversation he would’ve sworn he had no idea of Harry’s feelings, even though deep down that wasn’t how he felt. It was just that how he felt was convoluted. On one hand, he felt presumptuous assuming anyone would sacrifice so much of themselves for him, let alone two separate people. On the other hand, and especially with hindsight knowledge, all the signs were there. Did he purposefully lead Harry on? Was it a subconscious decision?

“Okay,” Oli said. “I think I found a company that’ll take you there with this little notice. You should kiss the ground I walk on.” He typed some more. “Are you okay, Tommo?”

Louis sighed again. He leaned his head against the concrete wall. “I don’t think I am, lad. No.”


	13. February 2014

**February 2014**

Harry took a sip of his lemonade and dropped his glass on the side table to his left. He squinted his eyes above the rim of his sunglasses to make sure he could still spot Max building sandcastles a few feet in front of him, then let his back rest against the lounger and stretched his legs.

It was his seventh day in Jamaica, the day of his twentieth birthday, and he felt… at peace.

He had finally found a way to sort out how to pay for Jeff’s retainer without breaking the law. After much consultation between his and Jeff’s lawyers, they’d also found loopholes to allow Jeff to actually help Harry out despite him already having a (very incompetent) management company. He had no hard feelings towards Modest, and he still considered most of its employees friends of some sort because he knew they’d done their best. It was just that their best wasn’t nearly close to what was best for Harry.

Jeff had warned him, though, that there was only so much he could do from his outsider position, but the changes were already noticeable. For instance, putting pressure into allowing Harry to take a ten-day-long holiday in Jamaica with his mates without having to make any sort of appearances in the middle. Being allowed to completely disappear on the day of his birthday was also new. The way his PR appearances with Kendall were handled and how the media had approached their mutually beneficial friendship was probably the best part of it so far.

Neither Jeff nor anyone would be able to control every random media outlet that covered the stories once they were out there, but by spinning a few big ones, the damage was much, much smaller and the splash of attention to help the album was still just as big. Harry was just thankful that, this time around, he didn’t look like a giant tosser in the tabloids (for the most part, at least — it was impossible to erase how his past had been handled and that approach stayed in certain journalist’s writing).

His mum was probably even more thankful. Harry’s whole family had met not only Jeff but basically the whole Azoff clan and Anne and Shelli, Jeff’s mother, got on like they were old friends immediately. Harry had worried that they’d have to hide their connection for legal reasons, but Irving, Jeff’s father, assured him that there were no issues with that and, if anything, showing himself to be well-connected would only be positive for his future opportunities and would make it easier for them to work in the background for him.

Because he didn’t want them to find out by the media and get the wrong idea of things, and because they _were_ his friends and developments like this one were something he liked to share with those he cared about, Harry had told his band mates what the Azoffs were doing and even advised them, just like Jeff had suggested, to try to make connections of their own and be clever about it. None of them had seemed all that interested in the advice, which Harry couldn’t really understand. They’d all been victims of mismanagement, one way or another.

Liam, the only one who had actually listened to Harry’s words without outright dismissing them, had told him that though it made sense for him to be worried about that sort of stuff, the rest of them were okay as they were. And Harry, well, he didn’t really appreciate that much, how they always talked about him as if he were somehow from a different species. He understood that his name brand was bigger and he wasn’t oblivious enough to ignore his popularity, but that didn’t make him an alien. He wasn’t a special case that needed sorting. They were all in the same situation, after all. He’d always considered them his brothers and the only people that could really understand him, but that was quickly changing.

They didn’t seem to approach their perceived disparity with bitterness of any kind. It didn’t feel like they resented him. It just felt like they saw him _differently_ and it just added to the weirdness of their relationship. A weirdness that had started with Harry and Louis’s… separation? What word could be used for what happened with them and their friendship?

Furthermore, back in early 2013 when he was trying to stop hooking up with Louis, Harry had _begged_ their team to allow him to take ‘time off’ from him in order to rid himself of temptation. If they had split green rooms, Harry wanted the one that was Louis-free. If the five of them were taking a long flight, Harry would prefer to not travel with Louis. He mostly avoided sleeping in the bus because he had a bad back and the bunk beds made it that much worse, but when he absolutely had to spend some time there, he would steadily choose the one Louis was not in. Sometimes, he’d even stay behind with the crew and travel at later times, if the schedule allowed it.

He’d never dream of asking the other lads to choose to travel or kip with him, so except for the few times when Niall would decide to come along, he was mostly solo, and that contributed to straining his relationship with his band mates, at least a little bit. They still had _a lot_ of shared time they couldn’t avoid. Rehearsals, concerts, writing, recording, interviews. Although Harry was quite thankful of the fact that they mostly did split interviews now and only the big ones got joint ones with the five of them, because the lack of interaction between him and Louis had become noticeable for everyone and flat out not having them in the same room at the same time was their best hope to avoid the awkwardness.

They’d both received bollockings from their teams. Numerous ones. As much as fans loved to theorise that they were being forced apart, reality was actually the opposite. Nobody in their label had ever given a damn about ‘gay rumours’ as long as there weren’t anything concrete to back them up. Harry didn’t understand how nobody realised that, given the fact that he had never stopped or drowned his friendship with Nick despite the amount of ‘shippers’ their potential relationship had amassed.

No, Syco and Columbia’s biggest concern was how badly their strained friendship made the band look. They also knew they could have a goldmine in ‘Larry Stylinson’, if only Harry and Louis would comply the tiniest bit. In the end, though, them being comfortable and agreeable and in a good mood in interviews and shows and photo shoots and, and, and, was clearly more important in their labels’ eyes, so they eventually stopped pushing and allowed them to behave as they wished (childishly, mostly).

“Talked to your mum yet?” Ben asks as he sits on the lounger to Harry’s right. “She rang me earlier, said you wouldn’t pick up. What were you doing, you sneaky bastard? Did you come back to the resort last night, even?”

Harry giggled and shrugged. “A man has needs. Birthday sex is great!”

“Oh, I haven’t said that yet, have I?” Ben nudged Harry’s shin with his foot. “Happy birthday, H. Happy you got laid. You don’t do that nearly enough.”

“Thanks.” Harry made a face. He’d only recently moved into his newly renovated house, and while he waited for it to be done, he’d frequently taken space in Ben’s attic, which got Ben to make _hilarious_ jokes about Harry’s lack of sex life. In reality, Harry just felt too weird to bring people back to a place that wasn’t his, and he mostly hooked up with people either at theirs or at hotels. “I came back to the resort at a quite reasonable hour, though,” he added. “Got up at like, nine, just been taking care of Max since then.”

“James and Julia got you on babysitting duty, then?”

“I offered,” Harry said. “Wanted to give them a proper day off. Cordo said if I make a good case I can be godfather to their next kid, so…” He waved at Max, who was looking at him and Ben curiously. Max waved back and smiled.

“Aren’t you a godfather already?” Ben shook his head, then stretched along his lounger. “You just turned twenty. What twenty-year-old yearns for _godchildren_. Jesus.”

“One day you lot will stop repeating I’m weird and love me just how I am.” Harry faked a pout, reached for his lemonade, took another sip.

“Reckon we love you more _because_ of who you are,” Ben said. “’S not odd in a bad way." Ben cleared his throat. “Anyway, what have you been up to other than babysitting and shagging? Haven’t seen that much of you, now that I think about it.”

“Don’t mention those two things together. God.” Harry laughed. “I’ve been writing a bunch, but it’s like the same concept over and over, so I don’t know if anything will come of it.”

Ben reached for Harry’s glass of lemonade and took a sip himself. “Tell us the concept, then.”

“Lost friendship slash relationship. How a person can be there but not at the same time.” Harry bit his lip. “Time changing people and making them unreachable even when appearing within reach.”

“Sounds… ghostly,” Ben said.

Harry snorted. “Yeah, I thought about that too. Like, not even that one person is there and the other one’s a ghost. It’s like, we’re both ghosts? We’ve both changed. Neither of us can reach. I can’t seem to get that idea out of my head.”

Ben placed the glass of lemonade on the end table between his and Harry’s lounger. “In short, you’ve been writing about Louis, then. Thought you were over that.”

Harry shrugged. “I am,” he said. “The concept isn’t like, love or even yearning. ’S more like, I can’t really escape our reality since it’s bloody there all the time, y’know? And it just feels chilling at times. The memory of how it was, even if it was never ideal. And the same person staring at you except, they’re not the same person at all, are they? They just look similar, because even that’s changed loads.”

“I mean,” Ben said, “it does sound like a cool concept to explore. I don’t think you should discard it just yet, especially not if it keeps coming back to you.”

Harry stretched his arms above his head, then dropped them back to his sides. “I don’t feel comfortable having the lads sing yet another song about me and Louis, to be honest. It’s torture enough to sing what we already sing…” He bit the inside of his cheek. “Did I tell you? I’d written one, very painful and a bit depressing, right? So, a few months ago, I was in the studio with Johan, literally looking at the lyrics we’d written, which at that point were already a bit old and felt cringy, wondering if we should record a demo of it or just discard it, yeah? And in comes Ariana Grande, who had booked the spot right after us, and Johan kind of just… offers her ‘our services’, jokingly and all that, but she was like really enthusiastic about it, so we sat down and polished the one we already had. I knew I’d never use it for the band, and it felt kind of… destiny or summat. Anyway, I got a call from Johan the other day. He talked to her manager and the song’s made the cut for her album coming up this summer, so…”

“That’s huge, H.” Ben gave him a big grin and tapped his arm. “How cringy did it end up?”

“It’s just super sad,” Harry said. “Was able to write it with the correct pronouns, though, so that was a bonus.”

“And are you just not gonna write for the band any more?” Ben asked. “How’s that gonna work?”

“Oh, no, I’ll still write. I’ll just… look for inspiration elsewhere, I guess?” Harry pursed his lips. “I gave Julian a few already and I like ’em enough. They’re probably not as deep or as cutting as I’d like them to be. It’s not idea, but it’s fine.”

It wasn’t, but he didn’t want to complain. He got creative freedom and got paid for expressing himself. It was his choice to not touch certain topics, and he liked to think it was a more mature one.

“You know what you need?” Ben said. “You need to fall in love again. Musical inspiration aside, you haven’t had the best experience when it comes to love and I think it’s time you gave it another shot. I don’t think you’re meant for friends with benefits or casual hookups, H. You’re meant for great love stories.” He smiled. “I think you’re finally in the right headspace to properly consider it, huh?”

Harry took a deep breath and glanced at Ben. He nodded. “I agree.”


	14. September 2014

**September 2014**

‘You can cut the tension with a knife’, Harry would’ve said with a chuckle in an attempt to lighten up the mood. Except that would’ve been an understatement and the tension was actually too high for cliche jokes.

He sat on the floor with his elbows on his knees instead. Bit his lower lip raw. Tried to keep his gaze trained on his feet to avoid accidentally making eye contact with one of his band mates. They were fighting, Louis with Zayn and Liam with Louis and then Liam with Zayn and Niall would randomly interject with a scoff and then walk off angrily and then come back dragging his feet.

Throughout it, Harry kept quiet, though he was sure he’d get roped into the argument soon enough. He was just delaying the inevitable. It’d been ten tense minutes that seemed like years, so it was only a matter of time.

“This is so pointless,” Zayn said as he dropped himself on the big leather sofa that dominated Louis’s ample living room. “It’s pointless. It’s ridiculous. We’re not gonna get anywhere by continuing to talk about it, so let’s just not.”

“The future of our entire careers is pointless?” Louis scoffed. “Unbelievable.”

“I don’t think that’s what he meant, Tommo.” Liam sat next to Zayn and patted his shoulder. “Let’s try to calm down.”

“Of course that’s not what I meant.” Zayn rolled his eyes. “I meant it’s pointless because the decision has been made and you lot can go blue in the face trying to change my mind but it won’t make a difference.”

Without lifting his head, Harry could tell that Louis had stopped pacing back and forth and was now looking straight at him. “So?” he said. “Have you got nothing to add, Harold? You care that little?”

Harry sighed, cracked his neck, looked up. There it was. Everyone was staring now. He opened his mouth, cleared his throat, closed it again.

Louis laughed bitterly. “Thought so.”

“Tommo…” Niall said in a warning tone.

“What?” Louis said defensively. “He doesn’t care! And why should he? None of this will affect him. He’s a superstar. Big enough to pretend-date Taylor Swift, innit?”

“It wasn’t pretend,” Harry muttered.

Louis snorted. “That’s what you choose to comment on, Styles?” He raised his eyebrows. “Zayn’s just told us he’s leaving the band, in case you missed it. Stop with your idealistic lovey bullshit. Are you gonna try and sell us you were in love with Swifty now? We were in the conference room when they set you up.”

“We’re getting sidetracked here,” Liam said.

Zayn widened his eyes at him. “Liam…”

“Sue me for wanting to give it a shot despite the circumstances,” Harry said under his breath. “Zayn’s made up his mind. He didn’t ask us to come here to give us a chance to talk him out of it. He did it to let us know it was a done deal.”

Harry knew because of his own experience with the exact same proposition from the label, that if Zayn had decided to tell them, there was little they could do to change his mind. He chose not to say he could’ve done this a year ago, but he knew — by the looks they shared — that Zayn knew.

“We’ll never know if we don’t even try…” Louis shook his head and sat on the coffee table with his back towards Zayn.

“I think…” Harry took a breath, pursed his lips, sighed. “I think we should consider maybe… taking a break. All of us.” Four pairs of eyes looked at him with confusion. “Our contract ends next year,” he continued. “We deliver the fifth album and it’s done. What are we gonna do? Sign again? Keep spitting up albums and tours and albums and tours until there are no fans left? We’re exhausting the fanbase and ourselves. I think we should take a break.”

“You’ve lost it,” Liam said. He shook his head in disbelief. “We’re selling four million records a year, mate. We’ve filled stadiums two years in a row without even putting material out and you wanna _take a break?_ What is wrong with you?”

“He wants to go solo, innit?” Louis said with a bitter laugh. “Reckons he has enough of a name to do that, huh?”

“Listen, I would absolutely try a solo career,” harry spat. “In my own terms, with my own vision and in my own time. And if you tell me you wouldn’t want to, you’re lying. But that’s not _why_. I’m knackered. I have nothing left to give and we still haven’t delivered the fourth album. I get where Zayn’s coming from. I can’t keep going like this for much longer. I’m saying, we fulfil our contracts and stop for a bit. We’ll always have the band to fall back on…”

“You mean _you‘_ ll always have the band to fall back on,” Niall said. He crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “Because the band would be your fallback. To us, it’s the only thing we have. It’s easy for you to dream about a solo career with all your connections and your industry friends.”

Harry wanted to scream.

“I _told you_ you should make connections. Are you kidding me?” He rubbed a hand down his face. “You’re all incredibly dense. I’ve been telling you for a year to get your shit together and now it’s my fault you haven’t? Jesus Christ.”

“He’s right,” Zayn said. “Don’t give me that look, lads. He did tell us. He was right. And I listened. I may not have Irving Azoff on my corner but I have Shahid and Simon hooked me up with some RCA executives. I want to do what H said. I want to continue doing music in my own terms. Actually have my vision in an album for a change. The only difference is that I can’t wait a year. I just can’t.”

“And what’s your plan, genius?” Louis stood up and put his hands on his hips. “The album’s almost done and your voice’s all over it. We’re not gonna rerecord it…”

“Well, I’ve been trying to explain it for half an hour now.” Zayn gave Louis a tired look. “Not my fault you refuse to listen… I’ll leave after promo for Four’s done.”

Harry chewed on his index finger, took a deep breath. “Why don’t you tour just for a bit, at least? To say goodbye to the fans and all that.” Before Zayn could protest, Harry put his hand up. “No, listen, if you know it’s, I don’t know, ten concerts and you’re done, you’re gonna have a different sort of energy. Like the last few months of secondary school, y’know? You can just go out there and have fun for a change. Forget about the pressure of it all. You would’t have to look at a horizon of dozens of concerts and months on the road writing and recording yet another album in a rushed way and doing promo for another couple of months. It’d just be the concerts…”

“We could do the countries we haven’t done yet in the first bit of tour.” Liam pursed his lips. “That could work, right? Then we put a little break in the middle and you leave there. We do it in a way that makes it clear we support you and it’s all amicable and we give a few weeks for the fans to get used to the idea. Then we continue and you can rest and do your own thing ‘in your own time’,” he added the last bit in airquotes but gave Zayn a smile.

Harry didn’t want to be cynical. He wanted to believe a completely amicable break-up was possible, but he knew better. He was told the plan enough times to understand the controversy would be pulled out of _somewhere_. He hoped Zayn would be smarted than that, but if he was as exhausted as he seemed to be, he may have fallen for it.

“That’s not a terrible idea,” Zayn said, nodding his head absentmindedly. “And you lads would take a break soon after that, right? So it’s not like I’d be missing all that much…”

“I think both _are_ Terrible ideas.” Louis shrugged. “I think you’re both being selfish pricks.”

“Tommo…” both Niall and Liam said in unison.

“You know what?” Harry got to his feet. “I think _you_ are the only selfish prick here. You were so invested in taking over the band that you’re now scared shitless it’s all gonna be for nothing. Did you seriously think we were gonna be in One Direction forever and only do that for the rest of our lives? What? Be the new Backstreet Boys? I have news for you, Louis. The Backstreet Boys took breaks more than once and tried solo careers more than once. The only reason they’re still together is that they failed at it. If you’re scared that’s gonna happen to us _that’s fine_. It’s understandable. I’m not hoping any of us will top what we’ve accomplished with the band, but I’d love to do _something_.” He paced through the living room. “We’re five different people with five different visions and tastes and ideas. We all deserve to test it out. The best bands in the world have done it. Stop being so small-minded just because you’re scared. I’m not going to continue with this cycle and compromising my ideas just so you can have the band that makes you feel important.” He made a ‘final’ gesture with his hands. “I’ve sacrificed enough time and energy on you to also do it with my career.”

And with that, he turned on his heel and walked towards the entrance.


	15. February 2015

**February 2015**

“So what were you doing before I got here?” Liam looked at Harry with his overly eager smile and somehow widened it. “Birthday-y stuff?”

Harry snorted. “I slept ’till two hours ago.” He cut a piece of the cake Glenne had baked and served it on a plate. He pushed the plate towards Liam, who was sat opposite him in his kitchen’s island. “Do you want tea with that?”

“Sure.” Liam poked the cake with his spoon. “’S not vegan or some LA shit, is it?”

“It’s a normal chocolate cake, Liam,” Harry said with a laugh as he turned on the electric kettle. “You’re more LA than I am. By miles.”

“Lies. I don’t do SoulCycle.” Liam stuck his tongue out. “Did you do something to the kitchen? I don’t remember it being this bright.”

“You were never here at noon, mate,” Harry said as he grabbed two cups, two spoons and a little box with tea bags and placed them all on the counter top in front of him. “I redid the living room and the back garden. Everything else’s the same, except for some paint, maybe.”

“You gonna flip this one?” Liam took a bite of the cake and made a delighted facial expression.

Harry poured the boiling water in the cups and shook his head. “Not for now.”

“We’re such adults, innit? Look at what we’re talking about. Flipping houses and redoing kitchens.” Liam gave Harry another one of his eager smiles. “’S depressing. Talk to me about something else. How’s your twenty-first going so far?”

“I know you drank your weight in alcohol, mate, but you _were_ at the party last night.”

“Got there a little late, didn’t I?” Liam said, then stuffed his mouth with more chocolate cake. “It did seem quite great, though. Who organised it? Jeff?”

Liam did get to the party late. And he brought Louis with him as well, which was… weird, to say the least. They both got wasted and barely interacted with anyone but each other. But Harry hadn’t complained the night before and he wouldn’t start now.

“Yeah, Jeff. I’m quite impressed with his organisational skills.” Harry took a sip of his tea.

Liam stirred the spoon in his mug. “Not to change the subject abruptly, but Kim told me you’re not travelling to Australia with me any more? Emma asked her to switch your flight, apparently. Think you gonna end up travelling with Tommo. He’s got some bird he’s shagging. He and Eleanor are... not in the best of places and he’s lashing out.”

Harry knew the bit about the plane trip; his assistant had warned him. He could handle being in the same flight as Louis once, he assumed. Hoped. The other part just made him sad. 2012, even early 2013 Harry would’ve killed for such a development. 2015 Harry couldn’t care less.

“Yeah, Emma’s been moving some stuff around for me. I want to make home base here for as much as I can,” Harry said. “With Robin’s treatment I wanna spend some time with him during the tour break, so I’m staying here for as long as I can now.”

“How’s he doing?” Liam asked. “Robin, I mean. Haven’t seen him in ages.”

Harry drank the last dregs of his tea and put his cup down. “Actually quite well. He’s been in remission for a while now.”

“That’s great news, H!” Liam nudged Harry’s left shoulder with his right fist. “Not to be insensitive, but I kinda —” he bit down a smile. “— I was wondering…”

Liam’s smile was contagious and Harry found himself mimicking it. “What?”

“You’ve already made home base here. You’ve been spending most of your down time in LA for years. What’s changed that now you’re making it a conscious effort?” Liam said the words as though there was something behind them. He lifted his cup to his mouth.

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Not sure what you mean.”

Liam drank a gulp of tea and wiped his lips with the back of his left hand. He tilted his head to the right. “Harry…”

“Liam…”

“Is there a new someone?” Liam raised his eyebrows. Wagged them. He looked ridiculous but so endearing. “Don’t lie!”

Harry shook his head and tried to hide his grin by biting the inside of his cheek. He stared at his hands, laced them atop the counter. “Dunno what you’re talking about.”

Liam laughed. “I saw you snogging inside the photo booth, mate. Just tell me about him.”

Harry met Liam’s eyes and they both chuckled. “What do you wanna know?”

“Whatever you wanna tell me…” Liam grabbed the last bit of his chocolate cake with his fingers and pushed it in his mouth unceremoniously. “First lad in a while, right?” he said around his mouthful.

Harry tilted his head from side to side in a considering manner. “I mean, that’s stuck around? Yeah. I’d say first one, full stop.”

Louis’s name remained unspoken between them, but Liam gave Harry a knowing look. No, he didn’t count.

“How serious is it?” Liam asked.

“I’d say, ‘Mum, this is my boyfriend,’ serious.” Harry shrugged at Liam’s widened eyes. “What?”

“You kept it quiet…” Liam said, and there was a little bit of hurt behind his tone.

The truth was they weren’t as close any more, and as well intentioned as they all were, all his band mates had made some seriously hurtful passing comments throughout the years. Comments about the idea of hooking up or dating men that they probably didn’t even notice they were making, but that still stung. That, plus the awkward situation with Louis made it hard for Harry to actually consider sharing Xander with them. His and Harry’s relationship was new, shiny, delightful. Great. Harry wanted to protect it and cherish it. It felt like it didn’t even belong in the One Direction world, and though Harry knew he’d have to bring them together eventually, he’d delay it for as much as he could.

“It’s quite recent,” Harry said. “Met him last December and we only made it official yesterday, if it makes you feel better.”

He wouldn’t have told any of them about Xander if Liam hadn’t asked anyway — with the exception of perhaps Niall, eventually — but he didn’t say that.

“I can’t remember the last time you had an official relationship,” Liam said thoughtfully.

Harry chuckled. “Perhaps ’cos I’ve never had one since we’ve met?”

“Really? Wow, that’s true…” Liam stuck his lower lip out, heaved a breath. “Maybe if you’d listened to us and got out there instead of following Tommo around like a lost puppy.”

Harry choked on air, then started laughing. He couldn’t believe Liam had just… gone there. So casually.

“Liam, oh my God,” he said in a giggle. “You…” He spluttered another laugh.

“What?” Liam shrugged. “Am I wrong?

Harry shook his head with a smile. “No. No, you're not.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jazz hands


	16. June 2015

**June 2015**

“Hey, Haz. Can you talk?”

Harry looked up from his journal and blinked in surprise. He knew he looked like a deer in the headlights, but he couldn’t help it. The last time Louis called him ‘Haz’ was… Harry couldn’t even remember. He put the pen to mark the page he was working on in his journal and closed it, then leaned back against the sofa and motioned for Louis to get inside his dressing room.

He sniffed. “Sure, come in.”

Louis gave him a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes and sat on one of the settees in front of him. He crossed his leg over his knee and started toying with the hem of his skinny jeans. “You’re not busy, are you?” he asked.

“Was writing down a few concepts,” Harry said. “Made a voicenote anyway, so ’s not like I’ll forget. You’re fine.”

He’d just finished a FaceTime conversation with Xander, one that had ended up with both of them tearing up. It was hard, missing each other. Harry constantly missed family and friends of all sorts, but he’d never felt this kind of void before. He was beginning to deeply comprehend some of the mushy lyrics he’d only shallowly related to before.

They’d done this already before, back when One Direction was touring Australia and Asia in the winter, and it’d felt terribly back then as well. Harry had gone through a point in which he thought it might end there and then, but then the tour break came and both him and Xander had made compromises in their schedule to spend most of it together in LA and they’d grown so close that missing each other was becoming harder and harder. As sad as it was, it was also incredibly inspiring.

Harry had thought he’d known heartache before with his unrequited love story with Louis, but it had nothing on this.

Louis swallowed hard and gave him another forced smile. He took a deep breath. “Alright, that’s great,” he said. He made an effort to maintain eye contact but his gaze quickly drifted back to his shoes. “Your tunes are always really cool, so our album will be blessed. You’ve been writing with some really interesting folks as well. I’m sure you’ve learned loads, yeah?”

Harry pursed his lips and nodded. “Hopefully,” he said. Where was this going?

“So, um.” Louis cleared his throat. “Fuck this gets weirder every time I say it.” He laughed bitterly, took another deep breath and let the air out harshly. “Okay, out with it, Tommo.” He let out another bitter laugh, met Harry’s eyes. “I’m gonna be a dad.”

Harry had never understood the literary figure of someone’s mouth dropping open at unexpected news. Until now, of course, because that was exactly what happened. He furrowed his brows and attempted to say something, but nothing came to mind. _What?_

“Yeah,” Louis said, shrugged. “Yeah, I know.”

“Holy shit,” Harry finally said. He dropped his journal next to him on the sofa and braced his elbows on his thighs, bringing his body forwards. “I mean… _holy shit.”_

“You’ve nailed my first response.” Louis laughed humourlessly.

“Are you sure? Who did you knock up?”

“Name’s Briana,” Louis said. “’S a girl I’ve been shagging, from LA. ’M gonna have a kid in LA, Harold. _Me_.”

“I think the LA part is the least important bit of information you could share right now.” Harry nibbled on his lower lip. “Are you _sure?”_ he repeated.

“Yeah.” Louis fiddled with his shoelaces and flicked his eyes from them to Harry’s face and back. He shrugged again. “She called me up a couple of weeks ago, right? And I knew, soon as she said it, I knew I was fucked.”

“Didn’t use protection, right?” Harry shook his head. “You always liked going in raw…”

“Oi,” Louis protested, then laughed. “Now’s not the time to reminisce, Jesus.” He licked his lips. “I pulled out, okay? Knew she was safe ’cos we’d been shagging for a while and I thought — dunno, mate. Was off my face, really. Didn’t think much.”

“I mean, she could still be lying,” Harry said.

“Nah, see. I told her to go visit this doctor Kim trusts in LA and get proper tests and shit done, right? Just in case timing didn’t fit or, I dunno, she was crazy enough to make the whole thing up.” Louis made a face. “Obviously, she wasn’t. Perfect match with the time. So, remember when I went to LA in that short trip few days ago? Well, got my blood taken, did a DNA test. Heard back from it yesterday. Positive. Gonna be a dad, 100%”

Harry dropped the finger he was biting and winced. “Congrats?”

Louis snorted. “Thanks. My god.”

“Are you okay?”

“Honest? No,” Louis said. “No, I’m not. I’m disappointed in myself. I’ve always thought this would down differently. I’m not a child, right? My mum was eighteen when she had me. I’ll be twenty-four when it’s born. That’s… really not that bad. I have the resources. Those are the first two things Simon said when I told him. And he’s right, ’course. But I just — I’m not ready, mentally, I’m really not. My head’s all over the place and I don’t feel mature enough.” He rubbed a hand down his face. “I’m not even into this girl. She’s pretty, but she’s just — I’d never properly date her. And I considered doing it just for the kid’s sake, y’know? Trying. ’Cos what do I have to lose? But the sole idea of being in a relationship with her sours my mood, so what’s even the point? And my life’s in London. I take the piss out of LA a lot but the weather’s nice and it’s really cool to have the beach so close and all that, but I’m gonna have like, half my life there now. Or more than half, I dunno. It’s gonna be _my kid_ , you know?” His eyes started to well up. “It’s across the ocean from _everything_ I’ve built. It’s just a fucking lot, y’know?”

As he pushed his knuckles to his eyes to wipe away his tears, Harry got to his feet and sat on the coffee table in front of him. He placed his hands on Louis’s calf, the one that was still leaning against his other knee.

“I’m sorry,” Harry said. “I don’t want to be the kind of insensitive shithead that just tells you it’s gonna be okay with no substance while you’re harvesting anxiety inside, but it is. It is gonna be okay, okay?” He willed Louis to look at him in the eyes. “If anyone, any of us in this band, could ever do fatherhood well at this point, that’s you. It’s shit, but it’s gonna be okay. It’s not perfect, but it’s gonna be okay. I’m positive you’ll make it work. You excel at making the best out of the worst circumstances, okay?”

Louis sniffled and nodded. More tears came out.

“Give us a hug,” Harry said. He opened his arms to welcome Louis in, who didn’t even say a word before complying. Harry rubbed between Louis’s shoulder blades with his left hand and patted his temple with his right one. “I know we’re not — but you can count on me, for what it’s worth.”

Louis nodded against Harry’s collarbones, took a deep breath and pulled away. He wiped away more tears. “Thank you. This really means a lot. Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Harry rubbed his hands down his thighs.

“No, I have to mention it, H. I have to.” Louis shook his head, seemingly to himself, and sighed. “I’m sorry. I’ve never said it, but I am. I’m sorry.”

Harry furrowed his brows. “What? What are you sorry for?”

Louis made a face. “Everything? I’ve not been that good to you, have I? I’ve fucked it all up quite a bit, I think.”

“Louis, it’s f —”

“No,” Louis interrupted him. “No, it’s not fine. And let me apologise because I need to get it off my chest and you deserve it, okay?”

“Okay.”

“It was never this huge deal for me.” Louis bit the inside of his cheek. “Liking dick, liking you. It was like, ‘Oh, that’s something I feel… okay.’ And I just…” He shrugged again. “I did my experimenting, what I would’ve done in uni or in a gap year in Europe, I did it with you. That was my reasoning. It was never something that I felt defined me. I liked it. I enjoyed it. I had _so_ much fun. You were my best friend and our chemistry was insane and it just felt so good. So I ignored the way you felt. It was a mixture of, like, wanting to keep doing it ’cos I was selfish like that, with being a self-deprecating idiot that couldn’t seriously admit to myself that you proper liked me —”

“I loved you,” Harry said. At Louis’s frown he elaborated, “I didn’t just _like_ you. I was mad about you.”

“Okay.” Louis chuckled. “Well, that’s worse, then.” He waved his hands helplessly. “To me, it was absurd because you were — you are — so much. You’ve always been this — this source of light. This beacon. I don’t even know how to proper express it, but you blind me. I think you blind everyone. You have something that can’t quite get defined and it just — it felt so _absurd_ to me that you’d waste your time with me.”

“That’s not —”

“I know, Harold,” Louis said. “You’re gonna say that I shouldn’t put myself down or summat, right? Well, that’s what I do. And to me you’re just brighter than most people I’ve ever met, so I couldn’t reconcile it. I couldn’t admit to myself that you were in love with me. It felt conceited to believe it.” He looked down for a moment, then met Harry’s eyes again. “It didn’t help that it wasn’t convenient for my conscience, of course. I would’ve had to stop, otherwise. And I didn’t want to because it was great. Being with you felt so good, and it was so much easier to deal with missing Eleanor or the bullshit that comes with a relationship, when I could focus on you. It all went to shit so soon after you and I stopped shagging because I had all this… space. In my head, in my life. I had Zayn, but it wasn’t the same, ’cos most of the time we ended up talking about El, anyway. How everything was so complicated. And he didn’t have the same qualms I had with sleeping around. He called me on my bullshit with the arrangement we had for you. He said it wasn’t any different and we were just lying to ourselves. I cheated on El towards the end. With Briana and with other girls and I realised that it wasn’t worse than sleeping with you. That both things were poison to our relationship.”

Harry nodded, though he couldn’t really understand most of what Louis was saying logically. He couldn’t comprehend having a solid, official relationship and betraying it. Then again, he and Xander had only been dating for less than five months.

“But do you get it, Harry?” Louis asked. “Do you get that me putting distance with you or denying our relationship wasn’t a reflection on you or how I felt about the idea of being — I don’t know, bi? However you call it. It was about the hate, about the disrespect towards El, about all that came with it... I don’t judge you for it. I don’t hate that part of myself. It’s just not something that I feel defines me. It’s pretty obvious it’s a big part of yourself, and that’s —” he let out a breath “— that’s fine, Harry. That’s more than fine. I respect you _so_ much for embracing it and making it part of your identity. It doesn’t hurt me not to do it. I’ve always subconsciously known that I wasn’t arrow straight, but I’ve also always known that I’d end up with a girl, two kids, a house, a dog, y’know? I’m not built to be special and fight all that. My mates are all Donny chavs and I don’t mind it. My family’s closed off and I love them anyway. It doesn’t hurt me to know that I’ll never go to Pride emblazoning a rainbow flag, but that doesn’t mean I reject that part of myself. Do you get it?”

“No,” Harry said. He shrugged. “I don’t. I wanna go to Pride emblazoning a rainbow flag so bad it hurts me, so I don’t get it. I have the same issue with some of my friends and family, but I don’t care. I feel so caged in sometimes that I worry I might suffocate. But I don’t judge you either.”

“That’s the only important part of this conversation, then.” Louis gave him a small smile.

“You started it telling me you were gonna have a baby, Louis,” Harry said in a laugh.

Louis joined in. “Whoops…” He pursed his lips. “As much as I _hate_ this whole hiatus thing, I am glad that it’s a step towards you doing your thing and being happier. Please know that. I don’t know what parts suffocate you or what things you’d like to express that you feel you can’t, but I’m really glad that’s gonna change. You could — I mean, none of us would have any issues with you starting now.”

“No, I know,” Harry said. “Thank you.” He ran a hand through his hair and tilted his head to the right. “And thank you for this conversation, Louis. I really do think you’re gonna be a good dad. I really do think everything will be fine.”

“Well, let’s hope you’re right, then.” Louis gave him a tight smile. “Alright, I’ll leave you to write. ’S it about that mysterious boyfriend you have that you’ve not introduced to any of us?” He got to his feet and winked at Harry when his face filled with surprise. “You look gone, mate. I might not search us online to prevent rage strokes, but it’s written all over your face. Also, Liam’s not good at keeping secrets…” He chuckled. “You have your proper love story now? The one you’ve wanted all this time?”

Harry reflexively glanced back at his phone, resting to his side on the coffee table, then at his journal on the sofa behind him, then back at Louis. “Yeah…”


	17. December 2015

**December 2015**

Harry lifted his eyes from his phone and his gaze met Xander’s, who was staring down at him with a smile. Xander started stroking Harry’s long hair then, and Harry hid the smile that started blossoming in his face on Xander’s thigh.

They’d been in this position — on the green room’s sofa, Xander with his feet propped up on the coffee table and Harry stretched out lengthwise and his head leaned on Xander’s lap — for about half an hour now. Comfortable silence reigned as they both checked their work emails on their phones.

Harry still couldn’t comprehend that Xander was here. That he’d once again arranged his work schedule to allow him to travel across the world to spend time together.

Xander kept saying it was nothing, that of course he’d be there for Harry’s final performance with One Direction, that it was just one of his duties as boyfriend and he didn’t min one bit, was happy to do it, actually.

But to Harry it was mad. They’d been together for almost a year, but so much of Harry’s life had been spent being second choice that he still couldn’t get used to it.

After the whole fake sexting incident, they’d taken obvious steps to be more conspicuous about their relationship, and though it did sting a little, Harry understood and was fine with it.

The fact that Xander had chosen to stay through it was enough for Harry to feel thankful.

He looked up at his boyfriend and they stared at each other with matching grins.

“I’m done for the day, baby,” Xander said. He put his mobile in his pocket and gently ran a finger down the bridge of Harry’s nose. “How long do you have before stage time?”

Harry dropped his phone on the sofa and propped himself up on a hand to lift his head and give Xander’s mouth a light kiss. “Twenty,” he said against Xander’s lips. He sat up and deepened it by softly biting down on Xander’s lower lip and grabbing Xander’s nape with his free hand. “‘Ve got to change outfits, though,” he said, turning the last words into a chuckle when Xander growled.

“Why’d you slip tongue in when you gotta go?” Xander pulled away and frowned but he ruined its effect by not being able to hold in his smile.

“To tease you.” Harry tilted his head to the side, pecked Xander’s lips, grinned.

“You’re a masochist, then,” Xander said as he palmed Harry’s crotch. His half mast cock twitched and Xander giggled. “Ha!”

Harry pushed Xander’s hand away but laced their fingers together on top of his thigh. “Dickhead,” he said in a snort.

He was leaning in to give Xander another kiss when someone cleared their throat behind his back.

Harry craned his neck to look at the door and found Louis, who was staring at them with an apologetic smile.

“Soz, but, H... Other Harry is looking for you,” he said. “I think summat about your suit?”

Harry bit his lip. God, the scene probably looked way worse than it was. Xander still had his left leg stretched on the coffee table in front of him, but his right one was bent at the knee with his foot propped up on the sofa, giving Louis a front row view of his crotch. He was also quite flushed and his lips looked red and plumped, as if he’d just had a long snog session instead of the quick innocent kisses they’d shared.

Meanwhile, Harry was sideways next to Xander’s lap with his body facing away but his back twisted towards him. His left leg was still stretched lengthwise on the sofa but his right one had fallen off it, which meant Louis also had an eyeful of Harry’s prominent bulge. To top it off, Harry’s right hand and Xander’s left were joined a mere inch away from it. And Harry could only guess the state of his face and hair, if Xander was this dishevelled.

“Um,” Harry said with a nervous chuckle, which only intensified when he heard Xander laughing softly. “Other Harry... right. You mean Lambert? Right. My suit. Of course. He’s my stylist.” He shook his head. By now, Xander was having trouble keeping his cackles in. Harry dropped his hand and pinched his palm. “Dick,” he whispered towards Xander with a smile. “Sorry,” he said out loud. “I have to get changed, right? I should get going now.”

It seemed as though Louis was also fighting laughter; Harry could tell he was biting down a smile.

“Can you?” he asked. He glanced down at Harry’s crotch and openly laughed.

Xander echoed it, then squeezed Harry’s thigh.

“Oh, piss off.” Harry chuckled and shook his head. He straightened his back and fixed his hair. “Both of you, piss off.”

Xander put his hand on Harry’s stomach and pulled him closer, until they were back to front. “Normal bodily functions shouldn’t be embarrassing, babe,” he said with his lips on Harry’s hair.

“Anyway,” Louis said. “I’m gonna go change too. Sorry I interrupted.” He nodded to both of them, turned on his heel and left, clicking the door shut behind him.

“Jealous much?” Xander said. He kissed Harry’s temple and caressed his stomach with his fingertips.

Harry leaned his head on Xander’s right shoulder. “Don’t be mean. Also, he has a girlfriend.”

“And?” Xander quirked an eyebrow. “When has that stopped him?”

“Blegh.” Harry made a face. He lifted his right hand to pitch Xander’s cheek. “Don’t wanna go out there thinking about my unfortunate past. You’ve two minutes to take my mind off it. Go!”

Xander turned to kiss Harry’s fingers. “Okay… hmmm.” He moved his head from side to side in thought. “When am I gonna hear you sing my songs live? Will you sing them on stage when you go solo?”

“Hadn’t thought about that, but I don’t see why not,” Harry said. “First I’d have to have enough of a career to be allowed a stage, though.”

Xander crossed both his arms on Harry’s stomach. “I don’t think that’ll be an issue. I can already see it. They’ll be announcing ‘Mr Harry Styles’ in this very stage in a year.”

“A year?!” Harry leaned his head further back to look at Xander with an incredulous smile.

“Okay, two,” Xander conceded. “How long will your hair be by then? Waist? Knees?”

Harry pushed himself off Xander and to his feet as he laughed. “Ankles,” he said. He walked backwards towards the green room door without taking his eyes off Xander. “Will you be here that day?”

Xander smiled. “Promise.”


	18. January 2016

January 2016

**Niall  
** **I never know how things are between you two  
** **And all the families and shit  
** **So just in case nobody else tells you  
** **Tommo’s son was born  
** **He’s called Freddie  
Text him congratulations or summat  
He’s bricking it and could use some support..  
**

Harry scrolled through the texts for the umpteenth time, pressed the home button on his mobile, locked it. He rolled his eyes and threw the phone on the sofa next to him.

He could feel the weight of Cameron’s eyes on him, so he gave him the finger without raising his eyes.

“That’s mature,” Cameron said. “How old was it that you were turning? Twenty-two or twelve?”

“Leave him alone,” Jeff said as he entered the living room of his father’s house. “If your ex had just had a baby you’d be weirded out too.”

“Not my ex,” Harry said also for the umpteenth time. “Not weirded out.”

“Then just text him and stop moping.” Cameron stood up and walked in the direction of the kitchen before Harry could reply.

“’M not moping,” Harry said under his breath anyway.

Jeff grabbed Harry’s mobile and took a seat next to him on the sofa. “It _can_ feel weird. It _is_ allowed.”

“I know.” Harry bit his lip. “And it does feel weird, but I’m not _weirded out_. That sounds so… negative. And i’s not fair for the baby. For Freddie. I’ve known this was coming for months, anyway.”

He chanced a glance at Jeff, who was twirling Harry’s iPhone between his fingers with a pensive expression. Jeff turned to stare back and tilted his head.

“Did you ever like, picture yourself having kids with him? Was it ever that serious to you?” Jeff asked. “I know you were gone for him for a while, but I don’t know the extent of it.”

Harry rested his head back on the sofa’s cushion and closed his eyes. “Abstractly, yeah…” He let a breath through his nose. “I don’t really like dwelling on it, though. Makes me feel stupid.”

“Why?”

“Because…” Harry snorted out a laugh. He blinked his eyes open and crossed his arms low on his chest. “I dunno. It’s just so… absurd, innit? For so long my bedtime story was my picture-perfect life with Louis. It was the only moment of the day I’d allow myself to actually daydream about it because I’d tell myself it was an actual dream in the morning. That I wasn’t that stupid, that my feet were firm on the ground.”

Jeff made a humming noise and there was silence for a while. Then he asked, “But what would you daydream about?”

Harry kicked his feet and crossed them at the ankle. He craned his neck to shoot Jeff an annoyed glance, but he was met with such a genuinely curious expression that he sighed and said, “So much shit… Late at night, just before sleep came, it was just a matter of time before Louis realised he’d had enough of denying his undying love for me. When we first moved in together, it was mostly that he’d come knocking on my door in the middle of the night with his eyes damp from crying and profess his feelings. We’d kiss and make love and sleep cuddled up in my giant bed and the next morning I’d wake up with him brushing my hair off my face and telling me he’d texted Eleanor, that he was gonna break up with her that day, asking me how we’d break the news to the guys.”

“Intense,” Jeff said, but there was no judgement in his tone.

“Yeah, I was seventeen.” Harry shrugged. “Then again, I was twenty-one with Xander and that wasn’t so much better, was it? Can’t seem to learn, me.”

“Hey, now,” Jeff said. “You dated for over a year. You were both adults. It was completely reasonable for you to picture a perfect life with him.”

“ _I think I might give up everything, just ask me to_ ,” Harry recited. “That’s just mad. That’s just crazy talk. I didn’t even know him that well. I didn’t even mean it. I put that on an album for Christ’s sake.”

Jeff frowned. “You did mean it. You still do.”

“I wouldn’t give up everything for anyone,” Harry said. “That’d be reckless and dumb.”

“You’re just saying that ’cause you’re hurt,” Jeff said. “The right person would never take you up on it, so they’d absolutely deserve that offer.”

“Schrodinger's offer, then?” Harry chuckled. “That’s an empty promise.”

Jeff tsked and flicked Harry’s shoulder. “No, it just means that under extreme circumstances that would warrant it, you’d do it. And you would’ve. It means that the person would do their very best for you to not have to reach that extreme. And he would’ve.”

“Are you seriously saying Xander was that person? Wouldn’t we still be together if that were the case?”

Jeff shrugged. “I have no idea what you’re doing or why. Your reasoning behind this break-up makes no fucking sense to me and I think you’ll both regret it. Soon.”

They’d broken up not a week ago, just days after Harry had received the news that he’d got the part in the Christopher Nolan film he’d auditioned for. They’d discussed Harry’s schedule at length for two weeks as they waited for the verdict after Harry’s millionth audition. They tried to find a way around the several months in Europe Harry was sure to be forced to spend if he got it. There was also the issue with Harry’s album, which was something Harry hadn’t actually talked to Xander about.

Ever since One Direction had settled on their hiatus and the possibility of working on his solo career started arising, Harry dreamed of doing things completely differently than he’d done them with the band. The albums had felt rushed, poorly produced, not the best work they could put out. Harry didn’t want that to happen to his solo career. Hell, he didn’t want that to be the case with the band, but that wasn’t something he could change. He _could_ control it for himself, though, and he’d researched on writing camps, secluded studios where he could just take his mind off things and work on music.

The trip he’d taken to Jamaica two years back kept coming to mind, especially since he first read about Geejam, the resort-slash-studio in Port Antonio, Jamaica.

It was too appealing to disappear for a month or two and just work in music, something he’d never been allowed to do before. It was too appealing to have no one but his closest people know about it, to get a break from being Harry Styles™ for a while. He still didn’t have a record deal, but thankfully, offers were aplenty, and they were seemingly good enough to allow him such luxury.

Still, he hadn’t mentioned it to Xander because it seemed to contradict everything he’d ever promised him. He’d told Xander he’d be his priority, even above his career. And in the middle of the honeymoon stage Harry had thought he’d meant it, but had he? Now, he wasn’t so sure. How would he have reacted if Xander had asked him not to do the film, to just record his album in a nice little LA studio? Somehow, Harry couldn’t even picture it.

He couldn’t imagine Xander ever asking him to do something like that, and maybe that gave Jeff a point. On the other hand, though, Harry’s schedule was the culprit of the end, so what did it say about all those whispered promises? Were they being stupid now or were the promises stupid before?

Harry’s head hurt from thinking, and he’d been silent for long enough that Jeff caught onto what was going through his brain. When they made eye contact, Jeff raised his eyebrows and smirked. Harry rolled his eyes and took his phone from Jeff’s hands.

He unlocked it and opened his Twitter app, something he barely did these days. His following list had become strange, a mixture of former fans who’d moved on to different things, Larry fans who with the years had become much too loud for his liking, regular fans who went about their day normally, and random celebs and socialités he’d followed to be polite or for some sort of promo deal. But he couldn’t very well unfollow people now. His fans took notice of every little thing and it’d just look bad.

A cursory scroll through his feed had him frowning, soon. Several pictures of Louis at what seemed to be a sunglasses shop kept popping up, and for some reason, some of the photos were zoomed in on his left wrist. After the third tweet of that sort, curiosity got the best of him and he opened the picture to see what it was about. It was a hospital tag, because, _right_ Louis was a father now. Another scroll and a video of the whole thing appeared. It was short, a handful of seconds. Louis arrived at the sunglasses shop, glanced around without actually focusing on anything, then turned back around and left.

“How tacky,” Harry found himself saying out loud without meaning to.

“Hm?” Jeff said, without lifting his eyes from his own phone, though he had the iMessages app pulled up.

“Nothing,” Harry said. He pressed the home button and opened his email app.

Jeff looked at him for a second, shrugged. “All right,” he said, turning his attention back to his phone.

Two seconds of scrolling through his email feed without actually reading anything and Harry couldn’t take it. He huffed. When Jeff didn’t say anything, Harry locked his phone and turned sideways on the sofa to face him. He looked at him expectantly and it took Jeff a few seconds to realise it.

“What?” Jeff asked.

“Louis.” Harry shook his head. “He did a pap walk to show off his hospital tag. ’S tacky, innit? What’s the point of it? ’S weird…”

Jeff pursed his lips. “Well, he’s not with the mother, is he? Maybe he wants to establish he’s not an absent father. Have it on the record that he was there for the birth and stuff.”

“There have to be other ways?” Harry said.

Jeff shrugged again. “Can’t think of many, to be honest. Posting a photo from the hospital, maybe? Perhaps he wants to keep those to himself. Releasing a statement, I guess… But this is harmless anyway. Who’s he hurting by doing this?”

“No one, I guess,” Harry said pensively. “It just seems unnecessary.”

“Just ’cause you wouldn’t do it doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with it.” Jeff turned his attention back to his phone. “Different strokes and all that.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “We’re polar opposites. How crazy is it that I ever thought we’d be a good match? Ugh, what is wrong with me today? Why am I so hung up on that?”

Jeff dropped his phone on his lap and gave Harry his full attention. “The person you first had serious, adult feelings for, has just had a baby. You’ve just broken up with your first real boyfriend. Your brain and heart are a mess. It’s normal. Give yourself a break and let yourself think and feel whatever it is you want to think and feel. Write it down. Make some music out of it.”


	19. October 2016

**October 2016**

Harry gripped the marble top and lifted his eyes to look at himself in the mirror. He wasn’t drunk, but he was tipsy, and in not too long he’d have to face the outside once again, and with it, the glare of the paparazzi flashes.

He tilted his head and studied his reflection. He looked… _okay._ He pursed his lips and raised a hand to run his fingers through his hair. It was growing steadily, but he sort of liked it short. He’d forgotten how easy it was to style it at this length. How much less he had to struggle to get it to stay out of his eyes when he worked out. He couldn’t imagine how he’d dealt with its shoulder-length in Jamaica if he hadn’t cut it.

He inspected his eyes, then. His pupils had a tendency to blow out whenever he drank a bit and it always sparked conspiracies about his apparent cocaine addiction among his fans, or so Gemma had told him. She’d said it jokingly, but Harry could sense the worried undertone, so he’d assured her that he’d only tried it once, one line, and that the extensive nosebleed he’d suffered afterwards had taught him that his body was just not prepared for that sort of excess. He could do tequila and vodka and weed but he was a wimp for anything stronger. So much for the rock star lifestyle.

He stretched his lips at the mirror and snorted a laugh at himself when he noticed just how unnaturally white his teeth looked paired up with his very tanned face. He yawned, then, and for some reason a tear slipped out of his right eye at the action. He wiped it with his index finger and his black nail polish sparkled against the very bright white light of the toilet.

There were so many thoughts threatening to break the surface in his head, and yet, none of them did. It was a pleasant sort of white noise filling the void. For the first time in months he wasn’t thinking about missing Xander, he wasn’t worrying about Robin’s health, he wasn’t stressing about his impending solo album or about his acting debut, and he wasn’t dwelling on his sexual frustration.

As he stared at himself in the mirror of Albert’s Club, in the middle of a party that he himself was hosting, to launch his very first official move as ‘Harry Styles’ instead of ‘Harry Styles from One Direction’, Harry took a deep breath through his nose, exhaled slowly, and smiled.


	20. December 2016

**December 2016**

There was so much noise, so many people in such a small room, so many boisterous cackles and so much body heat. The contrast with how _sad_ of an occasion it was and how cold it was outside made matters even worse for Harry.

He made himself smaller in the corner of the green room and tried to not look directly at anyone. He just wasn’t in the mood for making small talk. He pulled his phone out and aimlessly tapped on different apps to keep himself occupied.

Then, suddenly, the room went quiet. Everyone turned their attention to the very large flat screen that was fixed in the centre of one of the walls. Dermot had just finished introducing Louis, who was staring at the camera with a look of determination on his face.

Harry gulped and bit his lip. It felt strange, but at that very moment, Louis was the person he admired the most in the world.

Since he’d heard about the news of Jay passing, Harry hadn’t for one second, stopped feeling anguished. He was so incredibly devastated for losing someone that had always been so kind to him. He felt so incredibly guilty for how little he’d seen of her as he and Louis grew apart. And he was so incredibly scared about the fate of his own cancer-ridden parent. It was too much to bear. His eyes were constantly welling up. He was just so… _sad._

He couldn’t understand how Louis was keeping it together. How he was out there performing, solo for the first time in his career, just days after losing the person Harry _knew_ he loved the most. He’d heard Lottie, Louis’s sister, mention in passing that Louis had promised his mother he’d do this. That it was her encouragement that kept pushing him along.

But Harry couldn’t help but wonder if he’d be able to do it as well or if he’d crumble and fail to fulfil his promise, if he were ever to be in Louis’s shoes.

He was brought back to reality by the cheers and whoops of joy as Louis’s performance ended, and he subconsciously straightened his back as he waited for Louis to head back into the green room.

They hadn’t seen each other in almost a year to the date. Harry’d had lunch with Niall a handful of times over the months, and even spent a couple of afternoons with Liam when they happened to be in the same cities, but not with Louis. All the communication there’d been between them was as they addressed the whole group in the large email chain they had going on, where, frankly, Niall and Liam did most of the talking.

Harry just… Louis would talk about parenthood and send pictures of Freddie, and he’d spend so much time in Los Angeles or share photos of his constant travelling with Danielle, and Harry couldn’t recognise him in any of it. It was as if the last shreds of the person Harry’d spent so much time in love with had vanished. There wasn’t a trace of the boy he’d once loved with all his heart.

Until now, of course. As Louis made his way inside the room with one of his half-grimace-half smiles, Harry spotted it. As Louis shared hugs and soft ‘thank you’s with his loved ones, it reappeared.

It was behind his eyes and in between his pursed lips. It was in the way he nervously reached for his hair as Liam talked his ear off.

He had changed so much but his essence was still the same. And Harry wasn’t in love with that essence any more, but it was reassuring to know it still existed.

He cleared his throat and finally approached Louis who did a double take at him, as if he weren’t expecting to see him there.

“Hey,” Harry said. Which sounded so dumb, but what else could he have led with?

“Harry, hi.” Louis gave Harry a quick side-hug and flashed him a forced smile.

“I’m so, so sorry,” Harry said. “I’m so sorry. She was so amazing. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, she was.” Louis nodded. “Maybe she was too amazing and we didn’t deserve her.”

“You did, though. I’m sorry,” Harry said. “And what you just did out there… I’m — I don’t know if this means anything to you, but I’m proud. And she is too.”

“Coming from a Harry Hot Shot Styles? I’m gonna get a big head.” Louis shot him another forced smile. “Thank you. I just did what she wanted me to do, but thank you. And thank you for being here.”

“Of course. Couldn’t have missed it,” Harry said.

With a third forced smile, Louis moved onto the next person, and Harry felt himself slump. How much longer was he supposed to stay? The whole thing was too emotionally taxing and he just wanted to go home and sleep for a thousand years.

Harry felt Niall place a hand on his elbow and turned to look at him.

“Hey, H,” Niall said. “Do you wanna share a lift or are you getting your own?”

“Did you get a house in Hampstead?” Harry asked with a frown.

“What?” Niall said in a laugh. “What are you talking about?”

“Why would we share a lift?” Harry’s frown deepened. “Hertfordshire is like, the other side of the world for me from here.”

Niall cackled and pushed Harry away by the shoulder playfully. “I meant to the club, you berk!”

“What club?”

“Louis wants to go out and let off some steam and invited everyone to Cirque Le Soir.”

Harry blinked, frowned again, shook his head. “What?! No… I’m going _home_.”

“Oh, come on!” Liam said from behind him. “We’ve not been together in ages, H. You can’t blow us off!”

“What alternate reality am I living in?” Harry said as he turned to look at Liam. “This isn’t a charming little reunion. I’m not going out clubbing, mate…”

“Why not? What’s the problem? Louis wants to,” Liam said.

“And he’s got every right to grief in whatever way he deems best,” Harry said. “But I’m not gonna.”

“You can be so uptight sometimes,” Liam said. He looked at Niall for backup, but Niall raised his hands defensively and didn’t say anything.

“I’m not uptight.” Harry huffed. “I’m absolutely knackered and I’m going home to my mum and her husband, who’s undergoing a very taxing cancer treatment as we speak… I’m really not in the mood for partying…”

Liam closed his eyes briefly and shook his head, seemingly to himself. “Fuck,” he said. “Sorry, H. Sorry, sorry. I’m such an ass. You’re right. I completely forgot. How’s he doing?”

Harry looked around. The green room was almost empty by now, with only very close friends and family inside. He noticed Louis’s girlfriend, Danielle, posing for pictures with a blinding smile on her face. Everyone and everything was so _weird._

“He’s…” Harry shrugged. “As well as he can be, I guess.” He bit his lip. “You’re fine, Liam. I’m just not — This isn’t the best time to play catch-up for me. Sorry.”

“And we completely understand,” Niall said. “Right, Payno?”

“One hundred percent,” Liam said. “I’m sure Louis gets it as well.”

“Hey, guys!” a new voice cut in. The three of them turned to where it came from and were met with the sight of Steve Aoki, the DJ that had collaborated with Louis for his solo debut. “So good to finally meet you! I’m Steve.”

Both Niall and Liam greeted him effusively. Apparently Louis had boasted about how great of a person Steve was to both of them for months. When it was Harry’s turn, they just shook hands and sent polite smiles to each other.

“So, I was wondering,” Steve said. “I do this thing called ‘the Aoki jump’ where I take a picture with people mid-jump, like, in the air.” He chuckled. “It sounds kinda lame put that way, but it looks really cool when you take the picture right. I was just telling Louis I’d love a One-D version of it.”

What kind of ridiculous reality was Harry living in? Someone had just passed away and everyone was behaving so fucking weirdly. Harry could excuse and understand everything from Louis and his family, but everyone else just seemed so out of line, with their excessive laughing and screaming and partying. And _jumping_. What the fuck? He simply couldn’t understand it.

“Sorry,” Harry said. “I just don’t think I can do a jump in this suit.” He couldn’t believe he’d had to utter that sentence out loud at what was supposed to be some sort of wake.

Steve took Harry’s appearance in and nodded. “Right, yeah, that… Yeah, could be a bit complicated.” He chuckled. “You’re excused, Harry. Don’t worry. We can do a pic instead, right?”

“Huh?” Harry said.

He handed his phone to Liam. “Can you take a pic?” he asked him as he shuffled around to stand next to Harry.

“Sure,” Liam said with a smile. “Say cheese!”

Harry just stood there awkwardly and waited for the picture to be taken. Really fucking weird. Everyone.


	21. February 2017

**February 2017**

“Okay, it’s officially time for you to wake up,” Xander said as he sat next to Harry’s hip and kissed the back of his neck.

Harry was stretched on his stomach, right in the middle of his king sized mattress. He peeked at Xander out of his right eye and sank his head deeper in the pillow. “Mmmm.”

Xander snorted and tickled Harry’s ear. “C’mon, babe. This has got to be the longest nap you’ve ever taken.”

“You clearly didn’t know me as a teenager,” Harry said stubbornly.

“Barely, you were _twenty_.” Xander laughed. “It’s after 5 PM and you were already out by 2. It’s your birthday. Are you really gonna spend most of it asleep?”

Harry groaned. “I slept two hours last night.”

“I know, babe.”

“I had to pick you up from the airport at _five in the morning_ today.”

“I know, babe.”

“I’m _tired.”_

“And I’m not apologising,” Xander said. “You insisted on picking me up. I do have the Uber app on my phone.”

Harry looked at him with narrowed eyes. Well, _eye._ His left one was still hidden by the pillow. “I hadn’t seen you in two weeks and we just got back together. I wasn’t gonna let you take an Uber. I was being chivalrous.”

Xander snorted again. “I’m a thirty-three year old man. I don’t need my boyfriend to be _chivalrous_.” He bent down to kiss Harry’s cheek, then whispered in his ear, “You’ve blown your cover now with that very good use of vocabulary. You’re more than wide awake. Get up!”

He pinched Harry’s hip, and Harry curled into himself with a peal of laughter. “Everyone can use some chivalry!”

Xander playfully bit his the juncture between his shoulder and neck. “Harry, come oooon,” he said in a chuckle. “You’ll be inundated by people in a couple of hours. I want to spend some quality _alone_ time with you before that.”

With that, Harry flipped onto his back and shot him a smile. “Fine,” he said. “If you give me a blowjob.”

Xander let out a loud cackle. “It’s been less than twelve hours since the last one,” he said. “You’re twenty-three now. Stop behaving like a horny teenager.”

“Never,” Harry said as his own laughter subsided. “God, I’m hungry.”

“Skipping lunch will do that to you,” Xander said as he looked at him fondly.

From the bedside table, Harry’s work phone pinged with a quick succession of messages. Harry would’ve ignored it, but he only had sound alerts for a very select group of people, so he stretched his arm to grab it.

 **Jeff  
** **PR nightmare!!!**  
 **Tell him to never do that again**  
 **For the love of God**  
 **What even is the point???**  
 **OH OF COURSE**  
 **I hope it gives him the boost he wanted for the Hot 100!!**  
 **The amount of people that hop on your dick for a little bit of promo**  
 **Did I know what I was signing up for when I approached you in 2013?**  
 **The answer you’re looking for is “No Jeff you didn’t you’re too good for me”**  
 **Irving wants to kill him hahahahaha**  
 **If this works for him I quit, by the way**

Harry blinked at the texts and read them all again. He shook his head to try to clear it, but the messages still made no sense.

His phone pinged again, then, as another one popped in. Then another. Then an image text.

 **Jeff  
** **This is what I’m talking about because I can just make up your dumb confused face**  
 **The oldest 23 year-old I’ve ever met who doesn’t want to use social media!**

Harry stared at the screenshot of the tweet for a second before it registered it.

“No way,” he said out loud. He looked at Xander, who was staring at him with a mixture of fondness and confusion and repeated, “No way.”

“What?” Xander said as he leaned down and tilted his head to look at Harry’s phone. He squinted his eyes as Harry zoomed in on the screenshot, then frowned. “Is that real?”

“Apparently!” Harry said. “ _Why_ though? What the fuck compelled him to do that?”

Xander laughed. “You’re asking _me_?”

“No, just… out loud,” Harry said. “Jeff said something about the Hot 100. I don’t know.”

Xander shrugged and smiled. “While you deal with that, I’ll heat up some Chinese leftovers for you. Because I’m the best boyfriend in the world.”

“The best boyfriend in the world would be cooking me a meal.” Harry sat up on the bed and ran a hand through his head. “Just saying…”

“Well, we’ve got a party in Malibu in about three hours and you slept most of the afternoon,” Xander said in mock exasperation. “I can’t work like this. I can’t.” He planted a kiss on Harry’s lips, got to his feet and left the room.

Harry’s phone started ringing, then, and Harry sighed when he noticed Jeff’s name in the caller ID.

“Before you start screeching, I deserve a ‘happy birthday’, I think,” Harry said.

“I called you at midnight, asshole,” Jeff said. “We had a celebratory brunch. There was cake involved. It was a few hours ago. You can’t possibly have forgotten already. I’ve more than wished you a happy birthday. Do I have to preface every conversation we have today with a congratulatory message?”

“Yes,” Harry said.

“Oh, fuck off.” Jeff laughed. “What do I do about your annoying leeching ex?”

“Which one?” Harry said in a laugh of his own.

“Touché,” Jeff said. “Come on, Hersch.”

“Nothing, just let it be.”

“Give me a break, Lennon,” Jeff said. “I don’t have the patience to deal with your politeness today.”

Harry scrunched his nose. “Why not McCartney, if you were going for that reference?”

“Wrong part of the sentence to focus on,” Jeff said.

“What is there to do, Jeffrey?” Harry said. “Literally _let it be._ It’ll blow off soon enough.”

“It’s been retweeted almost two-hundred thousand times. It’s _trending_.”

“Oh, no,” Harry said. “Not trending!”

Jeff laughed. “How are you so calm all the time?”

“You know I’m not,” Harry said. “I just don’t see the point of stressing over this. It’s done. Nothing we can do to tide it over other than let it —”

“Be. Okay.” Jeff sighed. “One condition. Talk to him. This is the last time he does this.”

Harry rolled his shoulders and let out a breath. “Can’t you talk to him?”

“Do you _really_ want me to?” Jeff asked.

Good point, no he didn’t. “No, I don’t,” he said. “Okay, I’ll see you in a bit, right?”

“No, I’m not going to your birthday party as a form of protest for you being so fucking complicated.”

Harry simply laughed. “Okay,” he said.

“I hate you,” Jeff said, then, “Oh, so help me God, I don’t. Happy birthday. I love you. See you in a bit.”

“Love you too, mate,” Harry said, then hung up.

He opened the iMessage app and looked for Louis’s thread, but there wasn’t one. He composed a new one, then and begged for Louis to still have the same number.

**Harry  
Thank you for the birthday wishes, mate! I really don’t want to sound ungrateful, but my manager is about to have a stroke. Maybe it’d be best if we kept those public interactions to a minimum, yeah? I really appreciate you reaching out, don’t get me wrong, but the aftermath is a bit much, and I think neither of us needs that right now. I heard your single on the radio the other day. Sirius, I believe? Congrats, that’s sick! Best wishes for you and yours. .xx**

He tacked on the last bit to make the message a more pleasant read. It was so nonsensical that he had to send it to begin with. For years he and Louis had a silent understanding. These things didn’t need to be spelled out. It was awkward for both of them and just… _unnecessary_. What made Louis think this was a good idea? Harry didn’t want to accept Jeff’s cynical explanation, but he was struggling to find another one.

 **Louis  
** **Ha ! Ook, sorry**  
 **Just saw Neil and Payno’s tweets and figured might as well !**  
 **You know that at some point we could move past this awkwardness and be normal bandmates and all that**  
 **But my bad !  
Haha**  
 **Not making that mistake again :)**

Harry stared at the passive aggressive emoji and laughed bitterly. Maybe he _should_ be cynical. Louis wanted them to be normal band mates? Now? Out of nowhere? After fucking Harry up for years? After ignoring each other for years? He couldn’t possibly be that dense. And what was it with the sarcastic replies? Was he trying to get a reaction out of Harry? He should know better, six and a half years in.

**Harry  
Thank you! .x**


	22. September 2017

**September 2017**

“How strong is that?” Niall asked.

Harry took another sip of his drink and pretended to mull it over. “Mm, well… it’s a daiquiri so… not strong at all, mate.”

Niall snorted an unattractive laugh. “That’s what I figured! But then you keep wincing every time you drink, so…”

“Ah, that’s ’cos it’s too sugary and I’ve bitten my lip,” Harry said. “I’ve got a cut and it stings.”

“You know,” Niall said, “It is kinda refreshing that underneath that whole rock star facade you’re still a fucking idiot.”

Harry kicked Niall’s shin and grinned. “Facade?” He faked a hurt expression. “You wound me.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong —” Niall drank his whole pint, then set the glass down on the coffee table “You _are_ a musical rock star. Gifted, my friend. You just aren’t as aloof as people believe you are.”

“Those are all compliments, so thank you,” Harry said, and they settled in comfortable silence.

They’d been in Harry’s penthouse suite, just sharing drinks and a pleasant conversation, for over half an hour now. Harry had just performed at the iHeart Music Festival and Niall was performing the next day, so it was a happy coincidence that their schedules aligned so well. It didn’t happen often, so when it did, they wanted to take advantage of it.

“When’s the last time you’ve seen Payno?” Niall asked.

“Um…” Harry narrowed his eyes in thought. “May? In New York, I think it was May. You?”

Niall grinned. “Last week. ’S actually quite cool to see him so much in the promo tour. Makes it easier to do this thing, to be honest. I dunno how you cope.”

Harry swallowed the ‘I’m used to it’ that was on the tip of his tongue. Because after an _‘I’m used to it’_ came a _‘you chose Louis over me 90% of the time’_ and an _‘even though you said from the start you had my back, you never actually did’_. And a million other sentences that just weren’t conductive to a pleasant conversation with a close friend. A million other sentences that just didn’t align with who Harry was as a person. He wasn’t demanding, vindictive. He wasn’t someone that held grudges. It felt like too much of a burden to hold onto that kind of negativity for so long.

Though sometimes he wished he could be that kind of person, if only for a little while. Especially when they asked bullshit questions like that one.

He just shrugged, took another sip of his daiquiri. The silence that followed wasn’t that comfortable.

After a few seconds that stretched on like minutes, Niall cleared his throat and said something under his breath that Harry couldn’t quite catch.

“What?” Harry asked.

Niall cleared his throat again. “I asked if you’ve seen Tommo. Like, at all.”

Harry suppressed an eye roll, but just barely. “No.”

“He’s in LA a lot.” Niall walked towards the mini fridge and grabbed a bottle of beer. Then sat back down.

“Okay,” Harry said.

“I mean, you see me every time we’re in the same city. I gather you do the same with Payno.”

“Yeah…?”

“H,” Niall said. “When is this… whatever the issue is, when is it gonna be over? When are you guys gonna settle and act like the mature adults you’re supposed to be?”

Harry finished his daiquiri and placed the glass on the coffee table. “I’m having trouble understanding what part of me and Louis not being friends is immature.”

“You guys are friends!”

“No, Niall. No, we’re not.” Harry crossed his right leg over his left one. “We stopped being friends the minute we stopped shagging. I’d actually say we kept on shagging even as we stopped being friends, but the lines are a little blurry, so let’s leave it at that.”

“But you’ve grown up together,” Niall said. “There are so many experiences and feelings you guys share that no one else could ever understand.”

“So, I gather you’re friends with Zayn, then?” Harry asked. “See him all the time, don’t you?”

“Ouch,” Niall said. “Low blow. You know he doesn’t want to. I’d be more than fine being friends with him.”

“My point is that just because we were friends at one point, or shared experiences, doesn’t mean we have to be friends _now_. Sometimes people grow apart.”

“But he wants to be your friend. In this situation, Louis is me and you are Zayn,” Niall said. “And let me tell you, it doesn’t feel that nice to be in this position.”

Harry laughed bitterly. “Louis doesn’t wanna be friends, Niall. What?”

“He does! He asks after you, sometimes.”

“Probably making small talk,” Harry said.

“He talked about you during his promo season,” Niall said, and his tone was triumphant, as if he had found a secret jackpot. “He talked about how proud he was of you with Dunkirk and all that.”

“Oh, yeah, I saw that,” Harry said. “I saw him repeating he hadn’t watched the movie and that he saw me walking the red carpet next to Tom Hardy. He sounded like he really knew his shit…”

It wasn’t often that Harry was this negatively sarcastic, but God, Niall was testing his patience.

“Oh, come on,” Niall said. “He said he was proud of how much Christopher Nolan had praised you!”

“Which was something he probably saw in a headline or scrolling through his Twitter feed for two minutes.”

“Well, he didn’t have to say anything at all, so…” Niall took a sip of his beer.

“He also didn’t need to tweet for my birthday, yet he did. And he set us back several steps in the conspiracy territory.” Harry exhaled through his nose. “Look, I don’t know what motivates him to do what he does. Talk about me, tweet about me, conjure Larry denials out of nowhere when no one was asking him, but it’s got nothing to do with wanting to be _my friend._ He knows me well enough and he knows that this isn’t the way to accomplish that.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know how to approach you,” Niall said. “Maybe this is him reaching out to you?”

“Maybe,” Harry conceded. “And maybe my sister is an alien?”

Niall laughed against the rim of his bottle. “You’re such an idiot.”

“I know you love Louis, and I know your intentions are pure.” Harry sighed. “It might annoy me but I know where you’re coming from. I just wish you’d let it go. Mine and Louis’s relationship, friendship… it’s gone. And there’s no lost love. I can assure you neither of us is pining over the other. He’s back with Eleanor, I’m back with Xander. We both have our friends and our families and our careers. We were very close for a very long time. And we shared very intricate and formative experiences at crucial times in our lives. We’re never going to forget each other, and we’re never going to be meaningless in each other’s histories. But the chapters are closed. I believe we’ve both come to terms with it… It’s just time everyone else does too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing this same "universe" parallel in [this fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15821628/chapters/36833517) if anyone wants more of it. It starts between chapter 14 and 15 of this fic, and it goes in a lot more detail on other aspects of Harry's life that don't necessarily have to do with Louis.
> 
> And if anyone is wondering, yes, this is absolutely what I think happened/is happening in real life (more or less). Happy 2019.


End file.
